


selling out (madison square garden)

by flybbfly



Series: Homesick at Band Camp (Wish You Were Here) [1]
Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: ;), Alternate Universe - Boy Band, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Belligerent Sexual Tension, Depression, Emo, M/M, Sexual Tension, Sexual tension out the wazoo, anti-anxiety meds, antidepressants, bandslash??, emo never dies, enjolras is confused, grantaire is sad, sophomore slump or comeback of the year, sort of, talk of sell outs and poseurs, unrealistically diverse pop bands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-01 07:32:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 26,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5197547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flybbfly/pseuds/flybbfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Things like this are why we didn't want a label,” Grantaire says.</p><p>“Well, you have one,” Cosette says. “Along with a tour bus that gets repaired if it breaks down, connections to excellent producers and studios, and a steady paycheck. Ask your bandmates if they agree.”</p><p>“I don't want to do this,” Grantaire says.</p><p>“You're joining Sank Amy's tour,” Cosette says. “We can talk more in the morning. Your first show with them is this weekend.”</p><hr/><p>Grantaire's the frontman of an emo-revival band. He really doesn't want to tour with bubblegum-pop-with-a-political-message boy band Sank Amy—but it's not really his choice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. volume one: the sell outs

**Author's Note:**

> so i used to write a lot (and i mean a LOT) of bandom. that means this is some insane self-indulgent bullshit. it was a lot of fun though.
> 
> (if for whatever reason you can't read the graphics, get in touch w me and i will send you text versions with descriptions)
> 
> warnings for depression and anxiety. partner-on-partner horseplay that might be construed as violence. recreational drug use (marijuana, cocaine, sometimes MDMA/ecstasy). lots of alcohol. lots of cigarette smoking. light bdsm in later chapters.
> 
>  **disclaimer:** instagram, buzzfeed, twitter, buzznet, vh1, mtv, pitchfork, absolute punk, etc had nothing to do with the writing of this fic. those are screenshots i've manipulated. none of the twitter accounts, instagram accounts, or journalists are real. if you're a representative of any of those sites, please don't sue me.

                                                 What  
does it mean to be important, to make  
important things? Who decides?

—

“I still don't think this is a good idea,” Grantaire says. “Our fans aren't the same as their fans. Who knows if ours can even afford big arenas? We play _nightclubs_. We're Terminal 5, not MSG.”

“Look, it's not really your _job_ to know who else your fans are listening to,” Cosette says. She sounds almost apologetic, but Grantaire knows better: this is her Appease The Talent voice. “But they're a huge band with a huge following, and you need some hype for your new album. We'll make sure to keep the costs down for your fans, but this is happening.”

“Things like this are why we didn't want a label,” Grantaire says.

It's a tired argument, which explains why everyone else has already backed down: Joly is bouncing a ball idly against the roof of his bunk, which is the bottom of Grantaire's bunk, which is super fucking irritating; Bossuet and Musichetta are in Bossuet's bunk watching a movie on a laptop; Eponine has just left for her third cigarette of the conversation.

“Well, you have one,” Cosette says. “Along with a tour bus that gets repaired if it breaks down, connections to excellent producers and studios, and a steady paycheck. Ask your bandmates if they agree.”

“I don't want to do this,” Grantaire says.

“You're touring with Sank Amy,” Cosette says. “We can talk more in the morning, but this discussion is over.”

“Cosette—”

“Goodbye, Grantaire.”

The line goes dead, and Grantaire slams his phone down on his bed roughly enough that Joly leans over the edge of his bunk, the bouncy ball rolling away out of sight.

“Sank Amy are okay,” Joly says traitorously.

“They're bubblegum pop with a shitty fake uplifting message,” Grantaire says. “They're perfectly packaged to sell singles and concert tickets.”

It's true: Sank Amy's most recent single, “Breaking It Apart,” is number one on Spotify, iTunes, and Billboard, and has been for weeks. Sardonic Colon—a name devised purely so that Grantaire could start shows by announcing, “We're a shitty band and we wanna jam!”—are on alt charts and in Alt Press, but that's about it.

“Alt kids don't make a career that lasts forever,” Eponine says.

She's returned, a new six pack in tow. She tosses a bottle to Grantaire, who opens it with the bottle opener on the back of his phone case.

“We need crossover appeal. Cosette's right.”

Grantaire groans and slides off his bunk.

“I hate Sank Amy,” he says.

“Don't lie,” Joly says.

Grantaire glares at both of them.

 

—

—

Sank Amy are one of those bizarre giant used-to-be-indie-now-decidedly-radio-pop bands like Arcade Fire or Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. Their diversity feels deliberate, and their white frontman makes them look like the cast of a Disney original series from the late 90s. They have about eight members, some of whom play ridiculous instruments like the fucking oboe on stage like they're in a high school auditorium and not selling out arenas. They used to play respectable indie pop, but pretty much everything is packaged for the radio now, and so when Grantaire finally meets them at their first tour date together in Atlanta, he's surprised that they're not as bad as he expected.

“Dude, I love that guitar riff on 'It's a Hurricane,'” their bassist, Combeferre, says, leading back in his chair. He's taller than Grantaire expected, and when he's not on stage he wears chunky glasses. Someone mentions to Grantaire that it's because of stage fright that he doesn't wear them when performing, that it helps when everyone's a little bit blurry. That makes him immediately more likable.

“That's all Joly,” Bossuet says, smiling lazily.

“It's a Hurricane and I Can't Sleep (Summer of Hate)” is the first single off Sardonic Colon's new album, a sad emo anthem with Joly's angry guitar and Bossuet's heavy bass backing sweet vocals from Musichetta that harmonize perfectly with Grantaire's voice. In the background is Eponine's drumming, a beat so steady that when he can't sleep now he often plays it and times his breathing to the sound of her sticks against her drums. 1 – 2 – inhale – 3 – 4 exhale – 1 – 2 inhale.

“Joly's really good, then,” Combeferre says. He takes the joint Bossuet passes him, which also makes him more likable.

The rest of Sank Amy are in the club the label has rented out for them, too, along with a dozen techs and two dozen more PR people, managers, and journalists. The only person who isn't present is Sank Amy's frontman, the elusive Enjolras. The blond is apparently something of an ascetic, avoiding partying at all costs, and this icebreaking event is evidently too close to a party.

“He's not that bad,” Courfeyrac—guitar—tells Grantaire. “Seriously. He just prefers not to spend time partying if he can do other stuff.”

“What does 'other stuff' mean?”

“Mostly reading political theory and writing songs about taking down the government.”

“I thought Jean Prouvaire wrote all your songs.”

“Sort of,” Courfeyrac says. “Enjolras isn't very good at rhyming.”

Grantaire stares at him, but Courfeyrac only grins back.

 

—

[ bigger ](https://i.imgur.com/03ZAUUP.jpg)

—

Grantaire doesn't catch a glimpse of Sank Amy's elusive frontman offstage until well after their show, when both bands are hanging out at a rest stop between Atlanta and Charleston.

Their respective bus drivers are peeing, and Grantaire is searching for liquor somewhere at any of the rest stop's little stores, but he isn't having much luck.

“Seriously,” he says aloud to no one in particular. “There's a D'Angelo's, which, let's face it, is just an even shittier Subway—there's a McDonalds _and_ a Wendy's, like you could conduct taste tests of French fries here—and there's a fucking _Carvel_ , what the fuck? But not even a gas station six pack of Miller Lite?”

“There's a gas station outside,” says a voice from behind him.

Grantaire turns: it's the only member of Sank Amy that he hasn't met yet, the frontman Enjolras. He's carrying a bottle of Coke Zero and a box of saltine crackers, and he's changed out of his stage clothes and showered, and somehow he's even better looking up close despite the lack of his admittedly attractive stage makeup. He looks like a model off duty with those chiseled cheekbones, that curly blond hair, joggers that hang just low enough for a glimpse of skin.

“Thanks,” Grantaire says. “Come with?”

Enjolras raises an eyebrow, but follows.

“I'm Enjolras,” he says. “I missed the party earlier, so I didn't get to meet everyone, but Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta stopped by our dressing room after our show to say hi. And of course I already know Eponine. So it's just you I haven't met.”

“Grantaire,” says Grantaire, who was busy at the venue's bar taking advantage of unlimited free drinks and flirting with a girl at the bar who didn't seem to know who Sardonic Colon were while his bandmates schmoozed with Sank Amy. “Nice to meet you.”

Enjolras is hot in a standard boy band kind of way, but there's something mean about it, a hard edge underneath the bubblegum pop. It's like their music, now that Grantaire is really listening to it: nearly every song is carefully manufactured to be a hit, but when they're rhyming “I feel it in my heart” with “We're breaking it apart,” they're not singing a standard pop break up song. It's something to admire even if Grantaire doesn't really care much for the band or its message. It makes his hands shake a little now, being this close up to Enjolras, who radiates a kind of brilliant energy.

“You're really going to drink more?” Enjolras says, following Grantaire to the gas station's refrigerators and making it unreasonably difficult for Grantaire to pick out beer. “I mean—weren't you at the bar earlier?”

“Gotta do something to distract from my crippling stage fright.”

“There's no way you have stage fright. I was watching you earlier—you're loud, charismatic, the works—”

“Yeah,” Grantaire says. “I did a ton of coke right before that.”

Enjolras stops dead. “Really?”

“I maybe wouldn't say a ton.” He chooses a six pack at last, enough for the night and maybe a breakfast brew or two. “Like … two lines? I don't do it all the time, just when I feel like I can't go on stage.”

“How do you perform after coming down?” Enjolras asks. “Or when you're, like, super hungover?”

Grantaire shrugs and pays for his beer. “I just deal with it, you know? The fans don't know me. They don't know what I'm doing or how I'm feeling. They just wanna see me play.”

He watched Enjolras's show, too. Enjolras isn't a “they just wanna see me play” kind of musician. Sank Amy's staging is set up to look like Congress—or sometimes just the Oval Office, Courfeyrac told him, if there's not enough space for Congress—but they all wear crazy makeup like they're in a circus. It's not subtle, really.

“But don't you feel like you're cheating them a little bit?” Enjolras cracks open his Coke when they reach the parking lot but doesn't drink from it. “Like—they're paying good money to see you at your best. You really want to show up acting _not_ your best?”

“They're paying good money to see me play music they like. I always play the music they like. I don't get the issue here.” Grantaire opens a bottle with the bottle opener on his phone and offers it to Enjolras, who shakes his head. “It's not like I'm trying to communicate some secret message. I'm just playing my songs.”

Enjolras frowns. It's a comical look on him, his lips pulling down at either corner. “I'm confused,” he says. “What exactly are your songs about?”

“I don't know—drugs? Sex? Music? Life?” Grantaire says. “Why?”

“Combeferre said your songs had a similar subject matter to ours, and I thought I was just being crazy, but they don't, do they?”

“What do you mean?”

“They're just—they're about sex. Or drugs. Or touring.”

“They're true to my life,” Grantaire says. “And they're songs for alt kids to jam to. It's not like we're trying to save the world here, you know?”

There have been fans, one or two, that have come up to Grantaire at meet and greets and said, “Your songs saved my life.” That's enough for him, really—he doesn't need to save the world. He knows the world is doomed with or without him. But a few kids—that's enough.

“Why not?” Enjolras says. “With your reach—you _could_.”

“That's a lot of pressure to put on a band that's only been selling out nightclubs for six months,” Grantaire says.

“We're on a sold out _arena tour_ ,” Enjolras says. “That's a lot of people to hear what you have to say.”

“They're just kids,” Grantaire says. “Most of them can't even vote. How are they going to do anything?”

“If everyone thought that, no one would ever get anything meaningful done.”

Grantaire finishes off his first beer. “No one ever does.”

Enjolras stares at him.

“Last call for boarding the bus,” a tech with a megaphone says. “We're still missing Grantaire and Enjolras—”

“That's my cue,” Grantaire says, winking. “See you later.”

Enjolras doesn't reply, only turns on his heel and walks back to his own bus, the sad packet of saltines slapping against his leg with every step.

 

—

—

They have a break between their dates in Richmond and Washington, which Grantaire takes full advantage of because it means he can sleep in a real bed in a real hotel after a real party in a real nightclub.

The label doesn't rent out an entire club for them this time since it's only the two bands and all their techs, but they spring for bottle service and a couple of tables in some swanky place in D.C. that's full of guys in suits hitting on girls who are also in suits. Nearly everyone looks like a senator. A real one, not the Sank Amy clown bullshit.

But everyone goes anyway, fills the club with band boys and techs, drinks on the label's dollar. Cosette stops by, taking the train down from New York to say hello and spend the night in Washington with them. Even Enjolras shows up and accepts the beer someone shoves in his hand, sits down in the corner of the Sank Amy space and talks on the phone in low tones.

“What's his deal?” Grantaire asks Jehan, the small and shy percussionist-slash-lyricist. “Does he have a wife or kids or something at home?”

Jehan looks over, a crease appearing between his slender brows. “I don't really know.” He's a little tipsy, just enough that a flush appears beneath the dark skin of his cheeks. “To tell you the truth,” he says, a little conspiratorially, “I don't think he really wanted to do this tour.”

“Talking about our boy?” Courfeyrac asks, sidling up to Jehan and throwing an arm around his shoulder possessively, which—makes no sense, really, considering if there's one member of Sank Amy who Grantaire's seen hook up with groupies, it's definitely Courfeyrac.

“Seems like he thinks he's too good for emo trash like us,” Grantaire says.

Courfeyrac laughs, but there's a careful tact behind his boisterousness. “I wouldn't say that,” he says. “He's just—he's utilitarian, right? He's not in music because he thinks it's fun, or because he likes it for its own merits, or because—whatever. He's in it because he thinks it's effective.”

“It's not an end in itself,” Jehan supplements.

“Then why _is_ he in it?”

Courfeyrac looks at Grantaire for a long moment.

“What do you think our songs are about?” he asks.

“I mean, politics? Revolution disguised as a love song?”

“Revolution _is_ a love song, for Enjolras,” Jehan says.

Enjolras puts down his phone, a sour expression twisting his lovely features. Something in Grantaire's chest stirs.

“He sounds like a dick,” Grantaire says.

“I wouldn't call him a dick,” Jehan says.

“What would you call him, then?”

Jehan gets this look on his face, serious, a slight pout, but his eyes almost look like they're glowing. Courfeyrac looks kind of like that, too, all heart-eyes, but he's got the smallest of smiles on his face.

“I'd call him a revolutionary,” Courfeyrac says.

“He's more than that,” Jehan says. “He'd be a martyr if anyone would let him. He's—incredible. He's almost a god if you ask me. Perseus, maybe, the first real hero. Prometheus, bringing fire to the people.”

“Apollo,” Courfeyrac says, “showing them the light.”

“He just looks like a dick to me,” Grantaire says, but Jehan has turned his gaze on Courfeyrac now, and Grantaire can kind of tell that's all he's going to get out of either of them.

 

—

[ bigger ](http://i.imgur.com/bwCVUKR.jpg)

—

The hotel rooms the label books in D.C. are reasonably big, which Grantaire suspects is a perk of touring with the American equivalent of One Direction. There's an after-afterparty in Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta's, a party suitably filled with drugs and alcohol for Grantaire's purposes.

He relishes in the burn of vodka in his throat. Grantaire loves vodka. It's one of those tastes that can't be disguised. A shot of vodka can still be felt buried in even a liter of another beverage. It won't let you forget you're poisoning yourself, and Grantaire loves it.

“You look high,” Eponine observes, tapping a cigarette out of her pack expertly and passing it to Grantaire, who accepts it with his mouth. She pulls out a second for herself and lights them both even though Grantaire's pretty sure you can't smoke indoors in their hotel. He aims his exhales out the window.

“I'm not,” Grantaire says. “Well—a little. I did some coke before the show, and Jehan just offered me some weed—”

“So by your standards, basically sober.”

Grantaire laughs.

“How are you liking this?” he asks, because he hasn't spent much time with Eponine in the week and a half since they started touring with Sank Amy. “I know you're friends with these guys, but, you know, I know shit was kind of weird with Pontmercy at the end.”

From what Grantaire can tell, Marius Pontmercy is the only one who uses his real name. He's figured out Jehan's, too—Jean Prouvaire—but the rest of Sank Amy even call each other by their stage names. He's seen them receive texts from each other. It's weird.

Eponine exhales a perfect puff of smoke that floats out of the window before dissipating in the early autumn air. The slight breeze is a welcome break from the heat inside the hotel room, and Grantaire pushes himself up on the window sill to catch more of it. He catches sight of Marius, who is leaning into what appears to be an intense conversation between himself, Cosette, and Enjolras.

“Not that weird,” Eponine says at last. “He wasn't interested. I was. I had a tour with you guys to get to so there was no time for either of us to get closure, not that he really seemed to need it. They were a paycheck, and they were cool guys, but that's about it.”

Beyond them, Washington stretches out, a city immaculately mapped out. Its architecture is neoclassical to a fault, though during a walking tour earlier Jehan took great care to point out small inaccuracies, columns adapted to contemporary tastes, anachronistic materials.

“I'm going to get another drink,” Eponine says. She doesn't offer to get one for him, which Grantaire takes to mean that he has suitably depressed her.

Grantaire lights another cigarette and continues to look out at the expanse of monuments, sharp and white in the glimmering light of the buildings surrounding them. He's glad that, of all the cities to spend the night in, their label has chosen this one. He plans to spend the morning—which for him really means early afternoon—checking out the Smithsonian. He's still a little pissed that they weren't in D.C. long enough the last time around for him to catch the American Art Museum or the National Gallery. It feels like a waste, seeing the entire country through the windows of his tour bus, passing him like abstract oil paintings.

“I knew you were deep.”

Grantaire looks up: Enjolras has disentangled himself from Cosette and Marius—a feat which Grantaire, glancing over at where the two are still tucked together, realizes must not have been all that difficult—and come to bother him.

“How does this—” Grantaire sweeps his left arm away from his chest “—mean I'm deep?”

“Look,” Enjolras says. “Sank Amy—we have a song called Washington.”

“I know,” Grantaire says. “It's about the president.”

“And the city, and the state too,” Enjolras says. He sits down next to Grantaire on the window sill, his body angled so that he's facing Grantaire but still managing to look out the window. “It's hard not to look at this city and think it's pretty.” This he says with disdain, the way someone might describe the young new wife of a wealthy ex. “But it represents so much more than that. Its beauty is the result of millions of people's death and suffering. It's a capital that's come to represent imperial exceptionalism, and it's built by slaves on land that belonged to a people against whom we committed genocide.”

“My line of thought stopped at thinking it was pretty,” Grantaire says. He can feel Enjolras's body heat through his jeans.

Enjolras frowns at him, that comical expression again. Grantaire kind of loves it, aggravating Enjolras: it comes to him so naturally that he feels almost like they've met before, like they're old friends. “I don't believe that.”

“Why are you so obsessed with thinking I'm deep?” Grantaire asks. “I can think something is just pretty and still be, like, a smart person, you know? But also, like—what does it matter?”

“I've listened to your music. There's real feeling there—you can't tell me 'Blue Moon' isn't political, or 'Finite Jest.'”

“Blue Moon is about how rare things are pretty,” Grantaire says. Enjolras blinks at this, and his expression flickers momentarily. “And it's about how much I like that beer even though it's basically famous for being the kind of beer people drink when they don't like beer. 'Finite Jest' is a joke.”

“But your new songs aren't jokes.” Enjolras's frown deepens. “Your first album was funny, I've heard.”

“I thought you said you'd listened to it.”

“I didn't realize it was supposed to be funny.”

“It was about, like, bands that take themselves too seriously,” Grantaire says, running a hand through his hair. “I don't know, like—we hadn't ever toured then, you know? We'd only ever played a couple of shows in, like, basements or whatever.” It's about how dumb Grantaire thought the entire music industry was, how hilarious he thought—then—it was that they'd tricked an indie label into letting them record and then talked shit on them right on the album. It was about being sad but fuck it, they could be sad and it would be fine because humans were fundamentally sad and everyone just dealt with it.

Grantaire doesn't really think like that anymore. He really hates a lot of the songs off the first album, but others make him nostalgic, and that coupled with fear—the fans have only heard two singles off the new album and one leaked track, “Blue Moon,” and so far they've liked them but other songs are weirder, less like the first album, sadder, bleaker—means that he's been for months, even before they joined Sank Amy. It doesn't help that he can feel himself start to twist, start to go inside out again, and his subconscious reaction seems to be to form an exoskeleton first. His mind wants to wrap him in a shell and keep him hidden in a corner until he's strong enough to come back out, but there isn't enough _time_ just now. He has a tour to get to, press to do, an album to promote. He has to sit up straight and smile and answer questions.

“And you think we take ourselves too seriously,” Enjolras says, his words dragging Grantaire out of the mess of his thoughts.

“I think you take _everything_ too seriously,” Grantaire says. “I mean, like, you don't get a drink with the techs after the show. You don't have a cigarette with the fans. You preach during meet and greets instead of getting to know people, you know?”

“I don't think there's anything wrong with taking your work seriously.” Enjolras shifts so that his back is against the window. He tilts his head up toward the ceiling as if looking to God, but Grantaire can only stare at the column of his throat, the jut of his Adam's apple, the spot where skin stretches forward to wrap around sharp jawbone. Stubble. The pout of his lower lip. “I think it's necessary to do it, especially when your work is important.”

“Music can be important and still be fun,” Grantaire says, raising his eyes and finding that Enjolras has been staring back at him out of the corner of his eyes.

“I'm not trying to have fun,” Enjolras says. “I'm trying to—”

“Save the world, right. I've heard.”

“Not save it. I mean, ideally, yeah, but I'm not naive. I know how far our reach is, how much we can do. We can _change_ the world. If we can just get enough kids to vote or protest or boycott or even just care about politics and human rights and equality, then we know we're leaving the world in better hands.”

“How can you know you're getting that message across if you preach without communicating?” Grantaire says. “You've heard what fans say about you. You're cold, you don't give out hugs, you're unapproachable, you're scary. You know what Ben Nicholson said—'art and religious experiences are the same thing.' At least Christ ate with his apostles.”

“And Christ was betrayed by them,” Enjolras retorts. “But I'm not trying to get people to like me. I don't _care_ if they like me. I want them to cross the desert with me, not buy me a drink.”

“That sounds like a sad existence.”

“Says the emo kid in 2015 smoking out the window of a hotel room alone while all his friends dance together.”

“I'm not alone,” Grantaire says, flashing Enjolras a smile that Enjolras blinks at like he's never seen one before. Figures. The dude is humorless. “I have you.”

 

—

—

It hits Grantaire again between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, a low wave of the same clinical depression that's stunted his writing and taken Sardonic Colon from a band that makes dick jokes and writes tracks like “Miami Baby” and “Catcher in the Pumpernickel” because it's funny into a band that plays all-too-serious emo anthems like “It's a Hurricane” to crowds of kids who've learned from them to take everything too seriously.

Grantaire has been told a thousand times that the human brain can get used to everything if you just give it enough time. This is something he believes at his core, something he has to trust in order to keep functioning on a daily basis. He knows it's cliché, but he has a series of bleakly inspirational quotes that he is religiously attached to: Life goes on. You will get used to this. The human brain can handle anything.

But more and more he's started to wonder if getting used to this, to this feeling like something is pressing down on his chest just enough to weakly suffocate him, plucking oxygen molecules one by one out of the air and tearing them apart to make them unbreathable at a pace just quick enough to feel but not quick enough to kill, if getting used to this is really preferable to the alternative. It's so sudden, this feeling that has him stuck in a pit of mild despair, and yet it has overtaken him completely, made the existence of an exit wound seem improbable at best. He doesn't want to get used to this. He doesn't want this to go on.

He forces himself to go through the motions anyway: wake up; do press for the new record; tweet when the label tells you to tweet; eat with the band; go to soundcheck; play a show; go to an afterparty and smoke a pack of cigarettes out the window or get on the bus and smoke a pack of cigarettes out the window. Do not say yes when the guys from Sank Amy invite you out to see the city. Do not say yes when your band wants to kill a few hours having a picnic outside.

Joly and Bossuet know what's happening, of course. They get it immediately, when they arrive in Philadelphia and Grantaire doesn't immediately switch from talking shit on the Steelers to talking shit on the Eagles. Eponine catches it a little later, when Grantaire zones out mid-conversation because he's busy focusing on the dark puddle made by a spilled drink outside of their dressing room before the show. Musichetta gets it mid-concert, when Grantaire faces the wrong direction while playing and sings into his microphone with his eyes closed.

They make him call his therapist, who ups his dosage and increases their phone conversations to twice a week. She tells him to ease off on the anxiety meds, alcohol, and weed until he starts to feel better, advice that Grantaire promptly ignores, swallowing a mouthful of vodka before he meets an ET or Extra or something reporter for an interview.

“You've been touring with Sank Amy for two weeks now. How's that?”

“Well, it's really different,” Grantaire says, looking at the reporter and not the camera per the producer's instructions. “We've switched from intimate club venues to giant arenas—it's wild to hear forty thousand people shouting your lyrics back at you, you know? But sometimes we miss talking to the kids. That's why we're doing some acoustic shows at radio stations and malls and things, and we have some secret shows coming up, too.”

“What about the guys in Sank Amy?” the journalist asks. They're in a studio ET or Extra or whatever have rented out just for this interview, some quick press before their show in Philly.

“They're great. They're a lot of fun, and they're really, really smart. I'd never met any of them before, and our sounds are really different, so I was worried they'd be, like, total pop divas—but they're not at all.”

The journalist is clearly unsatisfied by this. “How do you get along with Sank Amy's frontman, Enjolras? He's famously a loner, and you're famously a party animal, yet you've been spotted together several times.”

“Yeah, Enjolras is—” But what Enjolras is doesn't come to Grantaire. Despite months of media training, he freezes, stares at the journalist opposite him. He shrugs hopelessly and smiles.

The journalist senses Grantaire's discomfort and shifts slightly, saving him. “Does he live up to your expectations?”

“I'm not sure I had any,” Grantaire says. That's a lie. “He's smart, but—he's very idealistic. We argue a lot.” That isn't. “He's a good guy.”

“Sank Amy are known for having a political undertone to most of their songs. Would you say Sardonic Colon are a political band, too?”

“No,” Grantaire says, laughing. “I'd say we're a shitty band.”

“What would your bandmates say about that?”

“Obviously I don't know what they'd say. I mean, it'd be great to have them here too—they know a lot more than I do about their individual political opinions.”

He can hear his voice take on an edge, and the journalist catches it, too. This time he latches onto the discomfort: “Do you disagree a lot? About politics or about music?”

Grantaire doesn't mind interviews when he's with the band, when it's all of them hanging out on a couch in some writer's office or on a talk show host's couch or whatever. But more and more, requests have been coming in for just Grantaire or just Musichetta or just the two of them, and Grantaire doesn't like it at all.

He just feels sort of—he doesn't know how to explain it, really. “On the spot” isn't quite right. It's just kind of like cooking a meal and not crediting the farmers. Not that most cooks credit the farmers, but the good ones do these days—it's all locally grown and free range and grass fed. Or maybe like—doing an interview without the band is like being just a thumb. Important, sure, even vital, one might say—but alone, it's pretty useless. He's tried to explain this to journalists before, but he's pretty sure they think he's being modest. He isn't. Grantaire is self-aware to a fault: he knows exactly what he's capable of alone, and he knows that as part of a group he's a better musician, a better artist, and a better person.

So it is really fucking irritating that the journalist in question refuses to take that for an answer, leaning forward, lowering his voice conspiratorially, giving Grantaire a smile that is distinctly vulture-like in nature.

“Come on,” the journalist says. He missed a spot shaving. There's a rough patch directly to the left of his lips. “It can't be all fun and games and artistic camaraderie all the time. You guys must fight.”

“Well,” Grantaire says, leaning in and mirroring the journalist's smile. “I'll tell you what. Our guitarist, Joly—you know, the skinny one?”

“Yes?” The journalist is eating this up.

“Sometimes we worry about him,” Grantaire says. “He's had this problem for years, you know, but we've tested a thousand possibly remedies and we haven't found a solution.”

The journalist's face rearranges itself into an expression of careful concern, but his eyes retain that same birdlike gleam. “Oh dear,” he says. “Is everything okay?”

“It's just that he _snores_. And it's so ironic, because he'll throw all kinds of vitamins and things at us, but a Breathe Right strip? 'Oh, no, Grantaire, that'll break me out—oh no, Grantaire, don't you know those things ruin your respiratory disturbance index?'”

The journalist's concern fades into blankness. “He snores?”

“Oh yeah. It's horrible. We're all so tightly packed—all five of us—and it gets so loud at night, you know?”

There's a smile again, though it's less eager now.

“Well,” the journalist says, wheeling around to face another camera. “That's Grantaire from Sardonic Colon showing off his trademark sense of humor. And speaking of humor, have you heard about Drake's new partner-in-crime? More on that … after this.”

 

—

  


—

Grantaire is lying in his bunk sketching in an empty bus one afternoon somewhere—Delaware, maybe, or New Jersey—when a rough tapping comes at the door of the bus. Grantaire doesn't bother to move to open it: whoever it is, the door is probably unlocked, and if it isn't then they can fuck off for forgetting their keys. He feels a little woozy anyway, the product of mixing alcohol with a higher dose than he's used to of antidepressants, and there's no way he's getting up right now.

There's another sharp rapping at the door, and then it slides open.

“Grantaire?”

Grantaire looks over at the body approaching: it's Enjolras, a single spark in the ashes, having for once traded his habitual red for a grey hoodie that makes Grantaire smile—sardonically—because it feels like it reflects the inside of his head so well.

“What's up, Apollo?”

“Courfeyrac told you about that?” Enjolras says, smiling like he's embarrassed.

He climbs up to Eponine's bunk opposite Grantaire's and sits on it so that his legs are hanging off. He has to duck a little so that his head doesn't touch the ceiling. It's almost endearing to see him with his posture all fucked up like this, and Grantaire feels like he would smile if he didn't feel so exhausted.

“Courfeyrac did,” Grantaire says, looking up instead of at Enjolras. The ceiling of the bus is a dull greyed-out beige coated with a finish so glossy that in the right light he can see his blurred out reflection in it.

“What's up?” Enjolras says.

“Well, we have a show in a few hours, so, you know. That.”

“I meant—why are you in here when everyone else is out sight seeing?”

“What sights are there to see here? Is there like a curling hall of fame in Dover or something?”

“I don't know. Your fans live and work and go to school here. Don't you want to know where they come from?”

“I know where they come from,” Grantaire says. “Boring places, boring families, boring lives. They get a little escape from the monotony of their shitty lives at a Sardonic Colon show before they have to sit through the snoozefest that is your set.”

“We have costumes,” Enjolras says. Grantaire can hear the smile in his voice. “You all just wear black skinny jeans like it's 2007.”

“We don't need costumes. Our music is all the show we need.”

“Speaking of your music,” Enjolras says, and then stops, as if to wait for an answer.

“What about it?”

“I've only heard a few songs off your new album.”

“And?” Grantaire says, shifting to face Enjolras.

“I wanted to hear more.”

“Well, you can buy the album when it comes out in a couple of weeks like everyone else.”

“Or you could play some of it for me.”

“Why are you suddenly interested in our music?” Grantaire says. “I thought you wanted off this tour anyway.”

Enjolras doesn't pretend this isn't true. In fact, he shrugs, as if to say, _c'est la vie_ , which is of course ridiculous—since when is _la vie_ thinking you're too good for an opening act, especially one as popular as Sardonic Colon?

That irritates Grantaire, a sharp itch, the first thing to get under his exoskeleton in ages. He raises an eyebrow. “You gonna tell me why?”

“I thought you were off message,” Enjolras says. “I would've preferred to pick a different opener every city to showcase independent musicians around the country. We would've focused on musicians from marginalized groups who don't always have easy access to the music industry, found them on youtube, and paid them to play their stuff. We could've picked out artists who sing about their experiences as marginalized people instead of—you know—how hot girls are.”

“That's not what we sing about,” Grantaire says.

Enjolras raises an eyebrow. “I used to think your first album was mostly a joke, but now that I know you I'm not so sure.”

“What makes you think you know me?”

“We've been touring together for three weeks. How could I not know you?”

Grantaire sighs and looks back up at the ceiling. “I don't feel like I know _you_.”

“What does that mean?”

“You seem so smart, but everything you say is so _dumb_. It makes no sense.”

Enjolras is silent for a moment, and when Grantaire looks over at him he sees that Enjolras looks literally stricken, face a blotchy pink as if he's just been slapped.

“What?” Enjolras says, and then after another brief silence, “does that mean?”

“I mean—you really thought you were going to convince your record company to spend the time and money necessary to pay for a different performer every night? Were you going to find them yourself? When? You spend all day doing press or writing music—how ridiculous and impractical would it be to get opening acts that no one would even listen to? And what a waste of money—you know the point of an opener is to increase ticket sales, right? Your idea does nothing but spend money just for the hell of it.”

“It's not _just for the hell of it_. It's to help artists who wouldn't normally get recognition get it.”

“That's great, but it's not how the music industry works.” Grantaire, out of booze, slides off his bunk and lands on the floor with a dull thud. He moves into the bus's kitchenette and digs around in a cabinet for alcohol. A second later, Enjolras follows him. “You might like the label, but that doesn't mean they're, like, some benevolent philanthropic rulers. They're not going to spend money for the good of representation or whatever. This is the real world, not Disney Channel utopian bullshit, and they're running a business.”

Enjolras grabs Grantaire's arm and pulls him around quickly enough that it leaves Grantaire, a little drunk, momentarily swaying. Enjolras, evidently noticing, loosens his grip but doesn't move, steadying Grantaire and pissing him off at the same time.

“How can you say that?” Enjolras demands. “You're a band of five marginalized people—how can you not want people like you to get more exposure?”

Grantaire wrenches his arm out of Enjolras's slack grip.

“I didn't say I don't _want_ it. I said it doesn't make sense for your label to pay for it. I don't know how to make you understand that.”

“Try me,” Enjolras says.

“Have you ever heard of capitalism?” Grantaire asks, raising an eyebrow and cocking his head to the side mockingly.

Enjolras looks shocked, like no one has ever called him out before. Knowing his fans—devout, like Enjolras really does gleam with the grace of a god—it's not unlikely that no one has.

“I'm not naïve,” Enjolras says. “I understand how capitalism works. The label didn't want to spend the time even if we agreed to take a pay cut. And they thought this would be the best way to promote Sardonic Colon's new album. They've been planning it all year. Synergy or whatever. Nothing I said could change their minds.”

“And isn't that just horrible for you,” Grantaire says, turning around to continue his search for alcohol. “The Grammy-nominated, chart-topping Sank Amy, having to shut up and do what their bosses tell them to do.”

Enjolras is silent for another long moment.

“I came here because I wondered why you were locking yourself up alone,” Enjolras says. “But now I wonder if everyone's just avoiding you because they're all aware that you're a dick.”

“Fuck off,” Grantaire mumbles, finding a bottle at last.

For a fraction of a second, he thinks Enjolras won't, that he'll stay, that he'll apologize or maybe that Grantaire will apologize and that it'll all be fine and dandy. They'll be the good friends everyone else in their bands seems to be. It'll be wonderful.

But instead Enjolras leaves. Grantaire stays put squatted in front of the cabinet until he hears Enjolras slam the sliding door shut.

And then he crawls back up into his bunk, curls around his bottle of whiskey, and goes to sleep.

 

—

[ bigger ](https://i.imgur.com/a6g83AD.jpg)

Courfeyrac has become a constant presence recently, even more so than Combeferre, who talks to Eponine with a familiarity that Grantaire shouldn't find surprising.

It's not that Courfeyrac is annoying, or hitting on him, or bothering him in any way. It's just that he's always _there_ , leaning on Sardonic Colon's tour bus when Grantaire leaves in the morning for some form of lunch, or hovering before their shows, showing up to sound check with bottles of water and sometimes a vape already packed with weed.

Now, he's given up on all pretense and just come into the bus, a lanky intruder casting a long shadow over the lounge, where Grantaire is stretched out reading a copy of _NW_ that a fan gave him at a recent meet and greet and ignoring angry texts from Enjolras. Well, mostly ignoring.

“Guess what,” Courfeyrac says.

“Hello to you too,” Grantaire says, hiding his phone before Courfeyrac can see it. “Did Bossuet leave the door unlocked again?”

“Last I saw, he was tripping into Dunkin Donuts,” Courfeyrac says. He climbs over the back of the couch and shoves Grantaire's legs over so he can sit down. “Guess what.”

“You got real familiar, real quick, dude.”

“And yet you can't imagine life without me,” Courfeyrac says. “Guess. What.”

Grantaire sighs. “What?”

“First of all, I want to set you up on a date.”

“I don't date,” Grantaire says.

“Neither does the person I'm setting you up with.”

“Don't tell me it's you.”

“Me?” Courfeyrac looks genuinely surprised. “What?”

“That's good,” Grantaire says. “Imagine if we hooked up? It'd ruin our bands' whole chill-with-each-other-down-with-the-weirdos dynamic.”

“Right.” Courfeyrac's face changes almost imperceptibly, a shift in the set of his mouth. “Right. So. Something else.”

“What?”

“Look at this!”

He slides his phone over to Grantaire—a gossip column.

Grantaire rolls his eyes.

“No, look, you and Enjolras were photographed _canoodling_ over coffee.”

“I think we were just picking up lunch,” Grantaire says, examining it. “Combeferre was in the bathroom.”

“Bullshit,” Courfeyrac says cheerfully. “Bull. Shit. I have found the cure to all our problems. Enjolras has at last met his match.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Well,” Courfeyrac says, winking at Grantaire. He's very good at winking. Whenever Grantaire tries to wink, it looks like he's just been electrocuted or something, “he doesn't stop _talking_ about you. It's actually pretty annoying if I'm being honest. It's all, 'Courfeyrac, Grantaire thinks _this_ ,' or 'why does he believe _that_ ,' or 'Courfeyrac, _please_ , how do I make him _see_ —”

“I think he's annoyed that someone disagrees with him,” Grantaire says. His phone vibrates. Courfeyrac, to his credit, doesn't break eye contact. “I like you, Courfeyrac, but you're just as far up his ass as anyone else is.”

“I don't think you're wrong,” Courfeyrac says, still frighteningly cheerful. “You should join us. I think you'll find the inside of his ass pretty lovely.”

“That's … not the most disgusting thing I've ever pictured,” Grantaire says. “Although I never imagined you'd be there.”

“That's the best part,” Courfeyrac says. “I will be! A fully chaperoned double date. You, me, Enjolras, and Jehan.”

“I thought you and Jehan weren't dating.”

“Well, you see, I do have an ulterior motive,” Courfeyrac says, unabashedly gleeful at the thought. “I've been trying to figure out how to ask Jehan to go out with me for … uh … four years?” He actually blushes. “This seems like the perfect place to start, don't you think?”

“So you're asking me to trick Jehan into going on a date with you?”

“Of course not. That'd be disingenuous, and I am anything but. Of course I'll tell him it's a date … it'd just be nice to have a buffer.”

“I can't believe that you of all people are asking for a buffer.”

Courfeyrac drops the act all at once: his face visibly changes, the pep shrinking into something more subdued. In an instant, he goes from being almost unbearably perky and a somewhat bright light in Grantaire's pit of despair to a person that Grantaire can actually imagine Enjolras being friends with. He's still got laugh lines, still radiates energy, but some of the farce is gone out of it.

“It's different with Jehan,” Courfeyrac says. “I don't know.” He combs fingers through his hair. “It's like—I could spend all day talking to all the coolest people in the world, and I'd be okay because I love people, right, love everything about them, adore them. That's why I love this job, right? I get to meet thousands of people every night. I love it. But my day just doesn't feel complete if I don't hang out with Jehan at least for a little bit.” He sighs. “I don't even know if he feels the same way, right, like, I'm so good with people, and I just don't ever know what's going on with Jehan at all. I feel like I'm blocking myself.”

Then, just as suddenly, the grin reappears on Courfeyrac's face. “Anyway. Sorry to dump all this on you. I can't think of anyone else Enjolras would agree to do this with, and I don't really want to mess with Eponine because of all the shit that went down with Marius, so—basically it's you or I have to suck it up and put on my big boy shoes and just do this the normal way.”

“You mean instead of the sixth grade way?”

“Exactly.”

“I mean—sure, fine, if you think Enjolras'll agree with it.”

“He already has.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Courfeyrac says, looking genuinely confused. “Why wouldn't he?”

“We don't exactly get along,” Grantaire says.

“That's not true. There's gossip!” Courfeyrac shoves the magazine clipping toward Grantaire again. “Gossip!”

Grantaire rolls his eyes.

“Okay,” he says. “I'll go on this weird fake double date since you're apparently too much of a pussy—”

“—that's sexist—”

“—sorry, a _wimp_ , to ask Jehan in a normal, adult way. We can act like eleven year olds instead. Sounds great.”

“I love you,” Courfeyrac says, leaning over to kiss Grantaire on the forehead. “I'll text you with the deets.”

“The deets,” Grantaire echoes, but Courfeyrac has already swung himself back over the couch and tumbled off the bus, leaving Grantaire to lie on the couch thinking about the implications of a date with Enjolras.

It's unbidden, but the thought of Enjolras as a date and Enjolras _after_ a date springs into Grantaire's head, blond hair fanned out on the pillow, pink lips parted, the sound of his voice as he groans—like his singing but hoarse, more animal—and the bus is empty and Grantaire gasps, “ _Fuck_ ,” out loud at the thought.

But then his phone vibrates: _so what would you say to Marx & class war if you think protests are ineffectual and useless?_

Grantaire grins despite himself. _i'd say a) fuck marx communism makes no sense and also b) marx KNEW THAT & thats why the bourgeoisie would be part of it. come on dude do better._

Enjolras, in all his ridiculousness, texts him back only an angry emoji.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Epigraph from Anna Meister's "Not Yr Cornfield."
> 
> Uh ... look for updates every other weekend. I'm about halfway done and it's only going to be three chapters long, but the graphics take fucking forever to make (I'm really excited about the album cover art though!!).


	2. volume two: pose(u)rs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> make sure to read the graphics—they actually feature plotty details, so they're necessary. if you don't like reading images / can't read them for whatever reason, feel free to reach out and i'll send you text versions (or possibly link to them within this text)
> 
> i'm not affiliated in any way with altpress, rolling stone, or buzzfeed, and all the reporter names for those sites are fake. if you have an issue with my use of their logos & website headings please let me know and i'll take them down.

_For beauty is nothing_  
_but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,_  
_And we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us._  
_Every angel is terrifying._  
Rainer Maria Rilke, “1st Duino Elegy”  


—

They're somewhere high up on the east coast, Providence or Hartford, when actual disaster happens.

The arena's power goes out. Its generator, the arena's rep tells them, can only power the lights and maybe, _maybe_ some mics.

Sank Amy and Sardonic Colon stare at them in faint surprise.

“I guess we're doing an acoustic show,” Combeferre says after a moment's silence. He turns to Sardonic Colon. “You guys down?”

“Yeah,” Bossuet says immediately. “Absolutely.”

Sardonic Colon play a meandering acoustic set, picking and choosing the songs that fit best. They play a cover of “[The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGzyBV8dEQ)” that Sank Amy's fans dance around confusedly to but that Sardonic Colon's fans roar out by the end— _You are the smell before rain / you are the blood in my veins_ —and then, louder— _CALL ME A SAFE BET—I'M BETTING I'M NOT_. Their fans turn up in an astounding way, singing along to even the newest singles and the leaked tracks, and Grantaire will still feel their self-generated bass thrumming through his veins hours later. 

When they get off stage, Grantaire can't help but laugh, giddy off the residual energy from the show in a way that's entirely different from usual. He feels none of the comedown from coke, none of the need to get more in his system; there is only his heartbeat echoing off his ribcage, thumping wildly, still humming the Brand New song as he stumbles past the members of Sank Amy doing their last minute prep.

Enjolras looks up at Grantaire from where he's doing makeup on the floor, lit by his cell phone flashlight. He doesn't have all the clown shit on tonight, just wild eyeliner and—it could be a trick of the light, but Grantaire thinks it isn't—lip gloss, shiny and pink over his already plump lips. Grantaire's voice catches in his throat before he can say anything.

“Spring keeps you ever close,” Enjolras sings, half-under his breath. “You are secondhand smoke.”

“No, you are,” Grantaire says, and Enjolras smiles into his reflection. “Good luck. It's a great crowd.”

“They always are.”

Even without their usual accoutrements, Sank Amy put on a hell of a show. They're all sitting down with acoustic guitars, Jehan holding a tambourine, Feuilly with an actual set of Moroccan bongo drums, but Enjolras hums into the mic and says, “Hello everyone—we're Sank Amy, and we want to save the world,” and that brings up a loud enough cheer that it doesn't matter that they don't have amps, or synths, or any of that. And his voice, unmodified, is clear and beautiful, the kind of voice that could make a killing selling Christmas albums.

Grantaire pictures the kind of Christmas albums Sank Amy would put out. “Happy Holidays, Not Merry Christmas.” “Communist Red Not Capitalist Green.” “How Capitalist Pigs Stole Christmas.” The liner notes would be a Marxist analysis of Frosty the Snowman or something. 

“We've never played this song without an orchestra or some backup tracks, so we're gonna need you to make some noise,” Enjolras says before sinking into one of the only songs on the most recent Sank Amy album that Grantaire really likes, “Mine.” His voice is husky from strain, magnified from the way Enjolras is almost kissing the mic, and it sends a shiver down Grantaire's spine. 

Enjolras has this quality Grantaire hasn't seen in a ton of performers: he makes you think he's talking to _you_ , not to the crowd. He manages to make eye contact with every single fan, even in an arena this big, and when he reaches Grantaire, Grantaire feels an indescribable ache that he tries desperately to flood away with beer. But Enjolras peppers his singing with little smiles and even snarls, and even Grantaire who knows this is all bullshit feels in his gut that he could if he wanted to save the world. When he has his lights and his noise surrounding him, Enjolras looks like an Old Testament angel, out to smite or save all of mankind. But stripped down like this, there's the tender ache of humanity weighing him down. It makes Grantaire's hairs stand on end, a frisson that is specific to Enjolras.

Bahorel guides the crowd through a beat box, and layered under Enjolras's voice, it sounds like Enjolras isn't so full of shit after all. This—revolution—this could really happen.

Courfeyrac was right. Enjolras isn't just giving the people fire. He's bringing them light.

Grantaire's heart thumps to the beat of the bass. He closes his eyes and smiles.

—

—

The acoustic sets inject some much-needed life into a tour that has gone stagnant. For Grantaire, again the windows have taken on the look of abstract oil paintings, vast landscapes blurring as the bus zooms through them, colors blending into grey asphalt and yellow-orange trees and not much else.

The last time Sardonic Colon toured for this long without a break, they were on their first tour, had only put out one EP, and spent the entire time following some metalheads around in a van switching off driving and sleep shifts, all their shit piled into the back.

Then, they got snippy with one another after only a week and a half of sleep deprivation and cramped quarters. They wrote no music, barely spoke outside of shows, and were altogether completely miserable. 

The tour lasted for six long months, and by the end none of them were speaking. The metalheads bid them goodbye somewhere in Nebraska, and Grantaire half-wanted to stay there forever among the corn stalks and cheap booze. He was sure then that he'd taken his last semester off of college for nothing, and he returned to school thinking Sardonic Colon were over.

But then Joly called him, and then Bossuet and Musichetta, and finally Eponine, and they finished an album and started a new tour.

Tour buses proved much easier to travel in. Their old indie label ensured they had three days off each month, occasionally splurged for separate motel rooms so they could have a night's worth of personal space, and booked them enough studio time that they felt guilty if they didn't take full advantage of it.

Sank Amy don't have the same requirements, and Stars Records don't seem to care much about Sardonic Colon's needs. No matter how much arguing Bossuet and Musichetta do, Cosette can't get any of them more than one off day a month and the occasional hotel room. And hotel rooms are nice, but they don't compare to time off. They just don't.

That means a month and a half into this tour, the five of them—who apparently have not outgrown their collective ability to get annoyed at each other—are speaking, but only in monotones and only when necessary.

Nothing specific sparks it. They just become snappish after a while, start avoiding one another's company, stop talking about making more music. It's no one's fault, really. Sometimes they're all sitting at a Denny's eating in silence when Joly mentions something about trans fats and Eponine snaps that she doesn't have the energy to care about trans fats and maybe he can find a restaurant next time if it matters so much to him. Sometimes the label books studio space for them in a random city and they pluck out a few chords on a guitar or piano and then stare at each other hopelessly. Once, they're all getting ready to go to an interview together, press with some radio station in Maine where people apparently still listen to the radio, and it's just cold enough outside, just early enough in the morning, just long enough since a hotel break that they're all in a shitty mood.

Grantaire wakes up late, and there's nowhere to shower so he just cleans himself off in the sink, which enrages Joly. Eponine is apparently hogging the bathroom, which enrages Bossuet. Joly has tried on four different outfits, which enrages Musichetta. And so on.

“It's fucking _radio_ ,” she's saying impatiently, while Grantaire tries to wipe Purel on his armpits. “It doesn't _matter_ how you look.”

“Grantaire, get your hair out of the sink we wash fruit in,” Joly says. “There will be _photographers_ , Musichetta, and I'm sick of being the only one in the band who doesn't make best dressed or hottest rockstars lists.”

“No one expects a rockstar to be Asian,” Bossuet says. “We knew that going into this.” 

That makes Joly throw a shoe across the bus at him, and then none of them speak at all on their long car ride to the radio station.

And then none of them speak the rest of the day.

And then none of them speak at sound check.

—

  
  


—

Gradually, Grantaire comes aware of the shift in the seasons.

Fall is beautiful in the northeast, but this year Grantaire can only think of what's to come, the endless winter, cold nights on their bus, buying winter coats before their gig in Buffalo. Heat at shows and cold afterward, and they'll be zig zagging up and down the northern border of the U.S. for another three months before they finally reach the west coast. There are few things Grantaire can think of that sound worse than the prospect of a winter in North Dakota.

It's Enjolras who brings this to his attention one afternoon when Grantaire has picked up donuts for the Sank Amy guys in an effort to escape the bleakness of the inside of his own bus. 

“Hey guys,” Grantaire says, pushing their door open. “Hungry?”

“Yes,” Courfeyrac says. “But before we let you in, answer a question for us: which American president do you think is least likely to have been a Yu-Gi-Oh fan?”

“Andrew Jackson,” Grantaire says immediately, to widespread calls of agreement.

“For the same reason as Teddy Roosevelt, yeah,” Bahorel says, accepting the box of donuts Grantaire passes him. “He doesn't need the fake fights. He has real war to deal with.”

“I just like the idea that no president who's prone to committing genocide would be interested in Yu-Gi-Oh,” Feuilly says. “But that doesn't fly with our analysis of FDR.”

“FDR would've been ashamed of it,” Combeferre says. “Like, he wouldn't have told anyone, but then you'd open like a secret compartment in his bed or something and it'd reveal a drawer full of limited edition cards.”

“A holographic Blue Eyes White Dragon,” Grantaire agrees. “All the Egyptian god cards.”

“Are you all talking about Yu-Gi-Oh again?” Jehan asks, emerging from the bunks in socked feet. “Grantaire! I thought I heard that lovely voice of yours.”

“Won't be lovely for long if I keep smoking a pack a day,” Grantaire says, offering Jehan the box.

“It's starting to get chilly,” Jehan says, reaching for a pumpkin donut and settling on the floor next to Grantaire. “It's gorgeous around here, though. We're in peak viewing time for the leaves here.”

“I wonder if we're going to see fans actually freeze waiting for us this year,” Combeferre says, concern wrinkling his forehead as he looks down at Grantaire. “Last year, we had someone pass out—we had to actually argue with the venues after that to provide hand warmers and things. Like, no one wants to be waiting in the freezing fucking cold in Ann Arbor, and they shouldn't be, especially since most of them are kids and they paid tons of money to see us.”

“I think we're going to be traveling between North Dakota and Missoula on the longest day of the year,” Enjolras says. Grantaire's heart jumps, irritably enough. “Can you imagine? _Fuck_.”

It's unlike Enjolras to express any kind of irritation at anything other than Grantaire or inequality, so it's no surprise that even this seems to be righteous: “They never let them in early or anything. I mean, I know they're all _from_ those cold ass places, but we have shows at night and it'll be like, below zero.” He leans back on the couch next to Combeferre and blows some of the hair out of his face. It flutters, suspended in the air for a moment, and then falls back over his forehead. Grantaire forces himself to look away.

“Relax,” Combeferre says, squeezing Enjolras's knee. “We'll do the hand-warmer thing again. Maybe if we had less standing room people wouldn't show up so early …”

“But the atmosphere would be completely destroyed,” Enjolras says, relaxing slightly under Combeferre's hand. “Maybe we could pay for those outdoor heating lamp things.”

“That could work. And it'd be good for the venues' future shows, too.”

Enjolras smiles at this, and Grantaire's gut twists uncomfortably.

It sort of irks him how close the Sank Amy guys are. They're less like the irritated dysfunctional found family that Sardonic Colon have become and more like a group of friends hanging out in weird semi-marital bliss.

It's not that he doesn't love his bandmates. He does. They're like siblings to him. But they're a month and a half into this tour and he already feels drained from the close quarters, exhausted over the constant bickering. Sank Amy are still bouncing off the walls enjoying each other's company, Jehan and Courfeyrac beaming and winking at one another as if the rest of them can't tell what's going on, and Grantaire can't help but roll his eyes.

This makes him actively hunt for someone to hook up with, and that night Grantaire finds himself lurking at the bar after Sardonic Colon's set. Somehow, they've managed to get more popular as the tour has gone on, and it's more and more difficult to differentiate their fans from Sank Amy's, a fact which grinds at Grantaire—he doesn't want to think of it as an “us versus them” kind of thing, but when he was a kid it felt like it _was_ , the kids into pop music and the kids into punk and hardcore and emo—but which he forces himself to ignore once he's ensured anyone he finds attractive wears an over 21 wristband.

He meets a pretty girl who works for the stadium they're at that night and takes her back to the Sardonic Colon bus while the rest of his band hang out in their dressing room or watch Sank Amy or bathe or eat or whatever. She moans underneath him, loud and exaggerated, and Grantaire, who has never had any hang ups about casual sex, Grantaire who loves sex and loves people, can't get off until he pulls out and she (blandly unsurprised) jerks him off. He comes in her hand, and she washes off in the sink at the little kitchenette. 

“I'll see you later,” she says.

“Yeah,” Grantaire replies.

But despite this apathetic response, Grantaire can't get the incident out of his head. He's never been one to look down on people who have casual sex, or to define casual sex as meaningless, or even one to think of the people he hooks up with as groupies or sluts or easy or objects. He figures they're people who are into sex and interested in having it with him for whatever reason—maybe they think he's funny, or they think he's attractive, or they're into the rockstar thing—but he's never really thought of them the way some other guys they've toured with think of them, as conquests or something. He likes casual sex because he likes _sex_ , likes the physical aspects of human bonding, likes touching and being touched.

Except now, apparently, he doesn't.

—

[bigger](https://i.imgur.com/PLWVOg7.jpg)

—

Blessedly, after weeks of making everyone around him as miserable as possible (Grantaire manages to pick fights with Joly, Musichetta, Cosette, and even poor Marius in addition to constant bickering with both Enjolras and Eponine), his meds kick in.

The colors start coming back into the world so slowly that Grantaire barely notices it at first. A flash of yellow there, green grass here, and then one day he wakes up and realizes: _My meds have kicked in. I am awake._

It happens in stutters and stops. One night, despite feeling mostly better, he can't make himself be _on_ after Sardonic Colon's set and slinks back to the bus alone without showering. Another night, he sleeps with a girl who shows up outside their hotel and kicks her out when he finds that, once again, he can't finish (“There's water in the minibar if you want. I need to piss—be gone when I'm back.”). He actually tells a fan to fuck off when he asks for an autograph, and then, a second later, whirls around and apologizes and in a fit of ashamed generosity brings him back to the bus and gives him a tee-shirt and some signed records (the story ends up on twitter, and Grantaire gets yet another angry phone call from Cosette as a result. “We're getting you your own PR rep,” she tells him, which—is fair enough). He still feels like he's become some fucked up brittle version of himself again, all his worst traits brought to the forefront as if his brain thinks they can help strengthen him—but he's getting better. 

One night, he bounces around on stage like he's eighteen and playing a live show for the first time. After that, he shimmies against Joly and Bossuet like he did last tour, and they respond in kind, letting him sing into their mics. The close contact with people he cares about, people he loves, injects him with new life, and he whirls around leading the audience in a singalong of their most popular song. Sometimes he's okay hanging out with the guys from Sank Amy, one or more of them showing up on the Sardonic Colon bus between rest stops and talking shit or watching a movie, Enjolras climbing in to argue whenever his own bandmates kick him out. Sometimes he goes to the Sank Amy bus—he gets along well with Jehan and Bahorel, and Combeferre's great even if he is a little nerdy, and Courfeyrac is so loud and cheerful that it'd be impossible not to be his friend. 

But for the most part, the heavy numbness is replaced with a deep, rumbling anxiety that tugs at his guts and twists them together so that Grantaire is almost always wound too tight, ready to snap. It's this delicate line—between snapping and cracking—that he straddles in every moment of social interaction, in every argument, in every interview, in every song-writing session he endures, Joly and Bossuet picking out notes on a keyboard or a guitar, _Grantaire, Grantaire, what do you think of this? Have you written anything recently? I think I might have a couple of tracks we can put to words, can you do that? Grantaire—_

—

—

Enjolras, it seems, is incapable of keeping to himself.

Like Courfeyrac, he shows up without invitation, but unlike Courfeyrac, he never does it in a normal, sane way. He doesn't just climb onto their bus at rest stops and hang out until the next stop. He doesn't have a drink with them after shows. Instead, he invades their pre-show and waits for Grantaire to start vocal warm ups to begin arguing, or he slips onto the bus when none of them are paying attention and then shadow-like starts a fight about socialism, or he waits until they're on a hotel night and almost breaks down Grantaire's door to ask him what he thinks about bands that were still good even though they made it big—“Because _The Wall_ sold twenty-three million copies, but you wouldn't call Pink Floyd sell outs.”

“It's not about the money,” Grantaire says, for what must be the thousandth time. “It's about the _art_.”

Enjolras steps past him into his hotel room, which is blessedly empty: Grantaire kicked the hotel bartender out of his room exactly twenty minutes before (blessedly, he found himself able to finish this time, and the bartender seemed to have fun too). If Grantaire didn't know better, he'd call Enjolras's timing deliberate.

“Where's Eponine?”

“I don't know,” Grantaire says. “We don't keep tabs on each other, you know.”

“They keep tabs on you.” 

“Well,” Grantaire says, lighting a cigarette despite the glaring red “no smoking” sign on his door. “ _I'm_ a liability.”

“No shit,” Enjolras says. “I'm a liability too. Combeferre's threatened to put a tracking device in my phone almost every day this tour.”

“There's already a tracking device in your phone. It's called GPS.”

“You know what I mean,” Enjolras says, sprawling in the armchair, languid in a way only Enjolras can be languid: limbs thrust around carelessly, rigid from the neck up. Grantaire wonders if it's practiced.

“Is that why you're here?”

“Sort of.” Enjolras tugs at a loose thread on the chair. “I want to extend our tour. South America. I've been talking to Cosette about it. Combeferre thinks we need a break.”

Combeferre and Courfeyrac, Grantaire has come to realize, are the only people from whom Enjolras will listen to reason. Evidently, however, his ability to reason has its limits.

“I think this is more important,” Enjolras continues. “And going to South America's basically like taking a vacation.”

“Not if you're working every day,” Grantaire says. “What's wrong with a vacation?”

Enjolras shifts uncomfortably. “It's such a waste of time. We could be helping people, but instead we'd just be lying on a beach.”

“Dude, we make music. We're not, like, Doctors Without Borders.”

“It's not _just_ music. We make important music,” Enjolras says, leaning forward earnestly. “That's the point to—all this.” He waves a hand dismissively at the hotel room, which Grantaire thinks is one of the nicer ones they've stayed in even if he does have to share with Eponine. “Don't you think I'd rather be working in politics or something? I _would_ be, if I thought I could make a difference, or even the same amount of difference.”

“None of us is ever going to make a difference,” Grantaire says, falling backwards on his bed and ashing his cigarette into the bowl on his nightstand. “Not a real one. We just have to make music we can be proud of.”

“That's bullshit,” Enjolras says, standing up, as if his bored pose can no longer contain his political righteousness. “That's lazy. It's a cop out. We have a responsibility to use our resources to do good.”

“Maybe my definition of good isn't 'futilely trying to save a doomed world',” Grantaire says, sitting up to make eye contact. “Maybe I'm not naïve and idealistic.”

“Can you stop being cynical for just a second and consider that I might actually be right about this?”

“Not while you continue to dismiss the possibility that what I do is just as important as what you do.”

“It would be, if you cared at all about actually trying to help people.”

“I think you can help people without having some secret political message!” Grantaire says, genuinely angry. He blinks when he realizes how close he and Enjolras have gotten; he's surprised to find himself standing at all. “Fans have literally told me I've saved their lives. That's not—that's not _nothing_ , you know? It's just not about inspiring the rev or whatever.”

“Why _bother_ , then? Why make music if your music doesn't have a _purpose_?”

“I'm so sick of you thinking my music is worthless just because its aim isn't to inspire a bunch of fourteen year olds to get themselves killed or arrested or at the very least disowned for trying to lead a Marxist revolution.”

“That's not what will happen!” Enjolras shouts, right in Grantaire's face. “I'm not _stupid_ , Grantaire, I've thought this through and figured it out and that's _not what will happen_ , and if it is—” He cuts himself off, jabs a finger into Grantaire's chest as if that's supposed to prove some kind of point. His cheeks are flushed, that stricken look he gets sometimes, like surprise has a color. “We're going to inspire our fans to change the world. I don't see what's _wrong_ with that.” Pleading now.

“There's nothing wrong with it,” Grantaire says, waving a hand impatiently. “I mean, other than that it's hopelessly naïve and clearly the product of someone who's never had to overcome much real oppression in his life.” Enjolras's jaw works, inches away from Grantaire's face. Grantaire thinks that if he wanted to, he could probably end this conversation now and get a good hate fuck out of it. It's tempting—Enjolras's mouth—but he's too pissed to stop. “If music could save the world, music _would've_ saved the world—what, you think you're better than John Lennon? Billie fucking Holiday?” Grantaire rolls his eyes. “I make music for music's sake. That's the only reason to do it. Any other reason is a waste of fucking time.”

Enjolras's voice drops. “So what _I_ do is worthless?” he asks, all breath.

“You said it.”

“Fuck you,” Enjolras says, flattening his hand against Grantaire's chest in one electrifying motion and then—as if it's supposed to anger Grantaire instead of turning him on—shoving.

“Fuck _you_ ,” Grantaire replies, backing away, but it's the most alive he's felt in months.

—

  
  


—

Grantaire can't help it sometimes: despite himself, he watches Sank Amy sets most nights, leaning against the VIP section's bar with a vodka in hand and a line or two keeping him going, sometimes swaying to the beat and sometimes just watching in still silence.

It's just that Enjolras—it's a tired comparison, but one he never tires of making—something about him is like the sun. Like he'll burn if you get too close, but there's something of the vital about him. Now that they've met, imagining spending time apart makes Grantaire feel like there's not enough air in the room. And yet to look upon him without some kind of protection hurts, and even though it's ridiculous Grantaire finds himself wearing sunglasses at Sank Amy shows more often than not. 

He thinks this must be it. This is why people believe Enjolras when he says they can change the world. Who _doesn't_ want to believe that their lives are worthwhile, that they're important? And Enjolras can convey all of that with a purse of his lovely lips.

“We've got a new album in the works,” Courfeyrac is saying on stage, glancing over at Jehan and grinning. Courfeyrac is great at hyping up the crowd, but there's no illusion: everyone's there for the real show, for the frontman currently facing his drummer instead of the crowd, taking a swig of water and swinging his sweat-soaked hair out of his face before whirling around.

“It's called _Polis_ ,” Enjolras says, and people scream. “We don't know when it'll be out yet, but here's the first single. It's called 'We the People.' Let's see If you can figure out the chorus and sing along.”

“We the People.” Of fucking course. Grantaire wonders if it's possible for anyone to roll their eyes harder than he's rolling his right now. The bartender catches sight of him, laughs.

“Yeah, they're a little much,” he says, but Grantaire can tell he's dazzled anyway. He has that Enjolras look in his eye, that cult-y fervor that comes from a would-be benevolent leader bestowing you with the power to change the world.

Grantaire throws back the rest of his drink and finds it within himself—finally—to leave.

—

—

For a week out of every six months, Grantaire forces himself to detox.

It's not like he drinks constantly the way he did on their first tour, and he's pretty sure he doesn't even drink every day. But he's not stupid. He _knows_ he drinks a lot. He knows it's bad for him. He knows it isn't sustainable.

So for a week every six months, he forces himself not to drink at all.

He doesn't know if it has any effects longterm. He only knows that he can assure himself that he's not so far gone that he can't stop as long as he has this one week off every six months.

He mostly switches his morning alcohol for coffee and cigarettes, his pre-show coke for more coffee, and his evening alcohol for weed. It means he's wired all day long, on edge, his hands shaky and his mind a mess. He dopes up with some anxiety meds just to keep his heart rate down, but that just makes him feel wavy, like he's smoked a batch gone moldy or something, laced with PCP or ketamine like the shit he sometimes gets by accident from shady dealers. Joly has him up his multivitamin dosage to ward off hallucinations and buys him a dozen bottles of Gatorade that Grantaire chugs constantly—when he finds himself unable to sleep at night, or when he wakes up parched and achey, or when he finds himself still irritable after his second cup of coffee.

As part of his detox, Grantaire doesn't allow himself to worm his way out of any of his obligations, be they social or professional. That means that when Courfeyrac swings by to call in his favor, Grantaire has to wet his hair in the sink and dress himself in his finest white shirt and tie and force himself to comply with social expectations, like not being a complete asshole to people he's started to call his friends.

They Uber to the restaurant, but it turns out to only be a few blocks away from where their buses are parked, which makes for a blissfully quiet Uber ride, doubly so when Grantaire decides he's going to sit in the front and avoid both puppy love from Courfeyrac and Jehan and conversation with Enjolras. The driver makes small talk, and Grantaire replies as enthusiastically as he can in his position leaning against the window staring absent-mindedly at the trees whizzing past. 

Despite his tie, Grantaire finds himself feeling horrifically underdressed in the restaurant Courfeyrac has chosen, which is probably the nicest restaurant in the state, glossy wooden tables, about four forks to each place setting. Grantaire sits opposite Enjolras and next to Jehan, a formation that makes him feel oddly like he's on the frontline of a battle. 

Enjolras seems to feel the same despite his jacket. He twirls a knife idly in one hand while they browse through menus, all stilted conversation, “I could go for some fish but I don't even know if it's in season,” “Do you think we should get a bottle of white? Or red?”

“I'm not drinking this week,” Grantaire says lazily, sipping at the coffee the waiter has already brought him. It's shitty restaurant coffee despite the quality of the restaurant, bitter and weak, grainy in the back of his throat. “So I can't provide you with my expertise.”

“Good,” Enjolras says. Renoir lips. Michelangelo hair. Grantaire imagines a course on art history that focuses exclusively on who could've come up with something like this. “You could do with a sober show or two.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” 

“Well, you know,” Enjolras says, “it'd just be nice to see how much better Sardonic Colon are when their frontman isn't stumbling off the stage.”

“That's all part of my act,” Grantaire says, waving a hand in what he hopes is an idle manner until it slams against his water glass. He catches it before he falls, and Enjolras actually smirks at him. It'd be annoying if it weren't so hot. It's annoying even though it's so hot. Maybe because.

“I'm going to run to the bathroom,” Jehan says. “I'll have the ravioli if the waiter comes back.”

Courfeyrac waits until Jehan has disappeared to round on both of them. “Okay, so clearly I was wrong and you two actually just want to have wild hate sex. But can you please, _please_ just pretend to like each other for two hours?”

“Sorry,” Enjolras says. He looks genuinely apologetic, a pout creasing his brow. “We'll try harder. At least, I will.”

He glares at Grantaire like they're 12 year olds being disciplined by the principal or something. Which, considering their current situation, they might as well be.

“God, this is all so weird,” Grantaire says, a little surprised that Courfeyrac doesn't know about his most recent spat with Enjolras, which has left relations between the two of them the coldest they've been all tour.

“Yeah, maybe it was a bad idea,” Courfeyrac says, pausing to beam at the waiter and spit out all four of their orders so quickly that the waiter looks taken aback. “But we've committed now, and I need you two to act like you don't hate each other.”

“We don't hate each other,” Enjolras says. “I'm just giving him some advice.”

“You are fucking insufferable,” Grantaire says.

“Switch seats with me,” Courfeyrac says. “I have a theory that you two will like each other better if you're not looking right into each other's hateful faces.”

Grantaire obeys, if only because he has an inkling that Courfeyrac is right. When he slips into Courfeyrac's seat, Enjolras's arm immediately drops from where it was resting around the back of it. Irritated, Grantaire puts _his_ arm on the back of _Enjolras_ 's chair.

“You are so fucking petty,” Courfeyrac says amicably.

“I'm a salty dude in a shitty band,” Grantaire agrees, flicking a piece of bread across the table at Courfeyrac. 

“Okay, just—try. Please. Play with each other's hair or something.”

“Fine,” Enjolras says. “We'll play with each other's hair. Any other suggestions?”

But then Jehan returns and Courfeyrac can't give them any more tips. Grantaire, still both annoyed at Enjolras and eager to prove himself a good friend to at least one person on this tour, tugs lightly on a few locks of Enjolras's hair. Enjolras drops the knife he's been using to butter his bread down on his plate, making a loud clattering sound that Grantaire grins at. But then Enjolras, instead of tugging away, actually moves toward Grantaire's trembling hand almost automatically, a motion that makes Jehan grin.

“I knew you two had a thing for each other,” he says.

But Enjolras turns and raises an eyebrow at Grantaire, so venomous that it shoots a shiver up Grantaire's spine. It feels threatening, and even though they're on the same side Grantaire still feels like he's on the frontline of a war.

It doesn't help that Enjolras spends the next hour and a half deliberately antagonizing him, stating political opinions too ridiculous to not be disputed, and it doesn't help that Grantaire keeps playing with his hair, pressing his fingers so close to Enjolras's scalp that at one point Enjolras actually stops eating for a moment and closes his eyes. They're both lucky that neither Courfeyrac nor Jehan notices, but Enjolras's arguments become more pointed after this. “I just don't see how a queer man of color can be so _apathetic_ ,” he says over and over, as if that's supposed to change Grantaire's mind when it's not even really accurate. Grantaire, irritable and desperate for a sip of the wine the rest of them are so cavalierly wasting, merely snaps back that he's not surprised someone as privileged as Enjolras has proved himself to be so entitled and naïve.

Worse, Enjolras makes good on the threat after dinner has finished and Courfeyrac and Jehan have returned to the Sank Amy bus. Enjolras follows Grantaire toward his, completely silent until Grantaire is about to go in.

“I like your tie,” Enjolras says. “Aren't you going to invite me up?”

Grantaire grins. “So you like it when people play with your hair, huh?”

“You look like you like it when people are mean to you.”

“I like it when hot people flirt with me, if that's what you mean.”

“Do you like it when _I_ flirt with you?” Enjolras says, slipping his fingers into Grantaire's belt loops.

Grantaire's mouth goes dry, but his heart kicks into gear, thudding so loudly in his chest that he can barely hear himself think. Almost mindlessly, he puts a hand on either side of Enjolras's hips, which makes Enjolras laugh, a breathy, mean little sound that makes Grantaire want to drag him closer.

But then Enjolras shoves Grantaire forward and pins him up against the door, his entire body pressed flush against Grantaire's, fingers digging into Grantaire's hips, one knee thrust between Grantaire's legs.

Grantaire forces himself to stifle a moan.

“The hair thing,” Enjolras growls into his ear, “was not fair.”

“What,” Grantaire says.

Enjolras exhales a ragged breath against Grantaire's neck. Grantaire tightens the hands on Enjolras's hips, and Enjolras's head presses against the crook of Grantaire's shoulder.

“I get why you have so many fans,” Enjolras says, which startles Grantaire enough that he almost laughs. “You're a swoony type. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“Enjolras,” Grantaire says. His voice comes out softer than he means it to, breathier. 

“Not fair,” Enjolras says again, hot breath against sensitive skin. Grantaire swears he can almost feel Enjolras's lips there, and he considers opening his mouth and begging Enjolras to just fucking _do it_ —

But then Enjolras lets go of Grantaire, winks, and half-staggers back to his own bus, hips swaying from side-to-side in model perfection. Ass only highlighted by tight denim. What a prick.

“Fucking,” Grantaire gasps, and then shouts after him, “Asshole!”

Enjolras doesn't even look back.

Grantaire, still breathless, considers the consequences of walking onto a bus full of people in this state and decides to stay put.

(Later, Eponine will blandly inform Grantaire that Enjolras has had enough of him and hopes he'll keep to himself. Grantaire, who is close to one hundred percent sure that Enjolras has definitely _not_ had enough of them, acquiesces nonetheless.)

—

jehan → courfeyrac                     courfeyrac → jehan

  
  


—

They're being shot for the cover of _Rolling Stone_ , and Grantaire has a sour taste in his mouth. Almost as soon as they get to the studio, the girls get whisked away to get their hair and nails done while Bossuet, Grantaire, and Joly sit in makeup—which for them is mostly just foundation and lip balm and weirdly heavy contours.

“This is so bullshit,” Grantaire mumbles for the thousandth time, and finally they bite.

“I don't get what the big deal is,” Bossuet says. “The responsibility of artists is to entertain. There are five of us and we entertain twenty or forty thousand people a night. How can you take issue with that?”

“The responsibility of artists is to _make art_ ,” Grantaire says. “And who gives a fuck if it's entertaining?”

“The person paying you,” Joly says. “You might want to go back to that disgusting van, selling our own clothing to pay for gas, but Cosette was right. I'm _enjoying_ this. And tons of people get to hear our music—what's wrong with that?”

“You don't think this album was inauthentic? Not at all?”

“If it was, it wasn't because of us,” Joly says. “I made music the way I know how to make music. If people like it, that's great!”

“It's poppier than our last album,” Grantaire says. “And you can't mosh in an arena.”

“Why would you _want_ our fans hurting themselves?” Bossuet says. “It's 2015, dude. Moshing at punk shows is a thing of the past.”

“But why does it have to be a thing of the past? I think it's sad that you can't express your love for a piece of art in that kind of tangible way anymore.”

“Dude, stop being so fucking pretentious,” Bossuet says.

“Our label isn't going to force us into anything,” Joly says. “They're good people. They're a business, but they care about the music too.”

“They already _have_ forced us into something. This fucking _tour_. And I'm not being pretentious—our music really has changed. And now it's getting more airtime on the radio.”

“Growth as musicians isn't equivalent to selling out,” Joly says. “ _You_ wrote a bunch of sad songs about how jaded you are. _You_ turned a band that made dick jokes and parodied musicians who take themselves too seriously into a band that's touring with the biggest pop group in the world. You should be proud of that.”

“I'm not.”

“Then leave,” Bossuet says. He doesn't say it like it's a challenge or like a dare. He just presents it as the next part in a logical argument. “Seriously. Or stop writing. We can pay someone else to write the songs. Maybe then you won't feel like they're your mistakes anymore. Joly and Eponine can still compose them. Sia or Kesha or something will write them. And you can sing and play guitar, but you don't have to feel like you sold out because you're not part of the decision-making process anymore.”

Grantaire goes cold all over. He looks up into Bossuet's face, at the raised eyebrow, the irritated set of his mouth. He looks too perfect with makeup on, skin poreless and matte.

“I don't want that,” Grantaire says. “It's the opposite of what I want.”

“The label hasn't made us change anything about the way we make music,” Joly says. “They've just given us health insurance. We're going to be on the cover of _Rolling Stone_. Just fucking enjoy it.”

“Enjoy it is right,” says the peppy journalist set to write about them, a Chuck Klosterman wannabe with a curly red hair pulled back in a try-hard man-bun and scratched Warby Parker glasses who shows up just in time to hear this last comment. “Let's get started, shall we?”

Glancing over at his band, Grantaire smiles.

“Let's,” he says, and around him he can feel Joly and Bossuet breathe a sigh of relief.

—

  
  


—

Grantaire isn't from New York originally, but he's lived there long enough that being out of the city feels like he's missing a limb any time he pays enough attention to that ache beneath his rib cage. He gets like this when he's gone too long, antsy and fidgety and lethargic all at once. To be in the city, even if it's for as terrifying a prospect as their release party, will be exhilarating.

He keeps staring at the plane tickets in his inbox, forwarded from Cosette's secretary, and it's hard to balance the anxious _shitFUCKshitFUCKshitFUCK_ of his pulse with the thrill he gets when he thinks of being back in New York. He's happy about it, but the idea that everyone will see what they've been working on for so long—the idea that everyone might not _like_ it, because why would they? They're a shitty band, they've said it themselves a thousand times, and this album is them pretending to be a band that takes itself and its music seriously—the idea that everyone will hear what they have to offer, and possibly reject it, is enough to have Grantaire on edge all the time now.

Sometimes Grantaire thinks that the only reason he's keeping himself together at all is for the sake of his band. He knows other musicians have left in the middle of tours to get treatment, or some who've attempted or committed suicide in the middle of tours, and he knows he's not at that stage (and ignores the biting voice at the back of his head that keeps saying, “ _yet_ ,” like he isn't on a metric fuckton of medication at all times), but he's pretty sure he's managing to function on a day-to-day basis at least partially for their benefit. He thinks Enjolras kind of gets this, but he's a different brand of disastrous, a hard-wired insomniac like Grantaire texting at all hours of the day and night, but where Grantaire feels like he's drowning half the time, Enjolras seems almost like he's hyperventilating, gasping for breath in a world trying to deny it to him.

Grantaire knows it's selfish, but he wishes the rest of them _knew_. They can't know, can't understand the extent to which authenticity fuels his self-worth, can't see how much he needs Sardonic Colon to still be a fun shitty band—because to believe even for a heartbeat in any of the hype is to give in to something he's terrified of giving in to. What if they believe the hype by accident, and then remember they're just a shitty band, and have to come crashing down to reality? What if he allows his ego to inflate, only to have some pinprick of doubt cause him to burst completely?

Sometimes Grantaire feels that to express the extent of his despair would only be to force his friends to endure a burden he doesn't think they deserve, and yet even when he occasionally tries, he finds himself unable to articulate his emptiness. Its depth. Its desperation.

His therapist gets it, though, or she gets it enough. He barely even has to say much. His upped dosage helps more than he likes to admit, even if it does take a while to break in, even if it breaks him out and puts a damper on his sex drive. He'll take that in exchange for the ability to look outside and see sun where before he was sure, would've bet his life that there were only clouds.

She tells him he can start taking his anxiety meds again, too, which Grantaire has been doing anyway, but in response to the drumming anxiety he feels whenever he thinks about the release of their newest album in just a couple of weeks, he self-medicates, ups his dosage. She threatens not to refill his prescription, but he knows a guy who knows a guy, and he isn't worried.

“You have to exercise restraint, Grantaire,” she tells him, and Grantaire tells her all about his detox.

She sighs, which Grantaire relays to Eponine as a good sign when they're shopping later that afternoon.

“How do you know it was a good sign?”

“It had a positive inflection,” Grantaire says, flicking through clearance jeans.

“What do you think of this one?” Eponine asks, trying on a leather jacket that looks like every other leather jacket she's tried on today.

Grantaire nods. “Yeah, it's nice.”

The two of them are on a forced retreat, Joly and Musichetta and Bossuet trying to work out whatever issues they have and sending Eponine and Grantaire out to talk about their own shit. Luckily, Grantaire and Eponine are skilled at both avoidance and disassociation, and together they shared a joint and then took an Uber to the nearby mall.

“It's just bullshit, you know,” Grantaire continues, digging through the women's t-shirts in an effort to find something striped that'll cling more than a men's shirt would. “You know they're just going to fuck and be fine, but it's not like that'll fix the rest of our problems.”

Eponine hums in what might be agreement. She tries on another jacket.

“Do you prefer this one or the first?”

Grantaire looks: this one is much busier than the other, zippers and tassels and fringe. “Definitely the first.”

“Good,” Eponine says. “I was worried you weren't paying attention.”

“Come on. Me?”

Eponine glances over at him and rolls her eyes. “You haven't exactly been observant lately.”

“Yes, I have,” Grantaire says. “Why's Combeferre always around, hmm?”

Eponine actually laughs at that, a nervous habit she has that rarely serves her well. “We're just hanging out.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning … we're just hanging out.”

“Do you like him?”

She shrugs. “I don't know. He's sweet and smart and funny. He's chill sometimes, but when he's on, he's really on. He's … really different.”

“You've always gone for the quiet ones, though.”

“Not his kind of quiet.” Eponine tries on another jacket. “How's this one?”

“That one's the best one.”

“Don't get the wide-striped shirt, those always make you look disproportionate.”

Grantaire looks down at the shirt he's holding. Wide stripes. “Thanks.”

“Just looking out for you, bro.” Eponine flashes Grantaire a smile, razor-thin and lightning fast, her trademark. Grantaire, who's somehow managed to forget how much he genuinely likes Eponine, can't help but smile in return.

“Well, I like Combeferre,” Grantaire says. “He's always down to smoke a bowl.”

“Is that really all someone needs to be a good dude in your book? They have to be down to do drugs with you?”

“Depends on the drug,” Grantaire says. “The metalheads would do pretty much whatever, but you know I don't fuck with opiates. Those were not good dudes. Combeferre is down to party, but he's smart, too, and he's—he seems like a sweetheart.”

“Thanks, big bro. Got any other insights into my personal life, or should we move on?”

“Hey, I'm just saying—you could do worse than Combeferre. Like, for example—”

“—Enjolras?”

Grantaire looks up in alarm. “Very funny.”

Eponine laughs, much less nervously this time. “Just kidding. But you two seem to get along pretty well.”

“We literally fight so much that he told you to tell me to stop talking to him.”

“He doesn't fight like that with anyone else.”

“He doesn't _hate_ anyone else,” Grantaire says, but he's thinking about Enjolras pressed up against him, laughing into the crook of his neck. Manipulative, maybe, but hateful—that seems unlike Enjolras.

Eponine seems to agree with him, because when Grantaire's grip on a breton-stripe shirt slackens, she cackles.

—

  
  


—

They devolve into something approximating cold shoulders, neither Grantaire nor Enjolras acknowledging the other's presence if they can manage it. The task becomes increasingly difficult as Grantaire grows increasingly annoyed with his bandmates. Shopping with Eponine, distracting as it was, has only served to highlight the irritation that comes with such close quarters. Now, seeking reprieve from them in the form of Courfeyrac or Jehan (or both) becomes an exercise in avoidance in and of itself as Grantaire ducks behind chairs or, once, dives behind a couch in order to avoid another argument with Enjolras and the ensuing outcry from Cosette, who has recently threatened to schedule the two of them for one interview.

“For two people who just went on a date, you don't seem to like each other very much,” Jehan observes, which makes Courfeyrac cough up a lungful of thick grey marijuana smoke.

“It ended badly,” Grantaire tells him once he's sure that Enjolras isn't going to pick a fight just for the hell of it (because he's _exhausted_ from fighting all the time, he really is—with Enjolras, with his bandmates, with Cosette, with himself—he just wants to smoke weed and talk about music with Courfeyrac and Jehan, and that shouldn't be so _difficult_ ).

“You looked really cuddly,” Jehan says. “I could've sworn you were going to go hook up in the woods or something, but then Enjolras hopped right back on our bus.”

“Didn't you see the state he was in, though?” says Courfeyrac, which elicits a laugh from Jehan.

Grantaire looks up sharply. “What state?”

“I'm sure you weren't much better,” Courfeyrac says. “He drew the curtains on his bunk and hid there for _hours_.”

“Combeferre brought him Gatorade, and Feuilly kept singing Celine Dion songs off-key,” Jehan says. “For a musician, he's remarkably tone-deaf.”

Grantaire stares at both of them.

“Well,” he says. 

Well indeed.

—

[bigger](http://i.imgur.com/LoWPdYh.jpg)

—

They're in Buffalo (the wrong part of New York, Grantaire can't help but think when they get there; it leaves a sour taste in his mouth that he can't quell even though he's really never had anything against Buffalo) when a member of the audience shouts, “SELL OUTS!” and throws a bottle at them. It smashes against Bossuet's shoulder, soaking him in something foul-smelling that must be piss, and he plays on anyway, choreographing a perfect spin and not missing a beat even as arena security find the person who threw it.

More arena people make them stop playing after that song ends, and Grantaire is livid enough that he's not sure he could go on anyway. The anger makes a nice change to the steady grind of anxiety, he thinks: the way his blood feels hot, the tha-thump tha-thump tha-thump of his pulse rushing through his head, fingernails digging into his own palms as he bounds off stage.

“What happened?” Feuilly asks as they pass the Sank Amy dressing room, but Grantaire is too angry to reply. 

“Just looks like some bruising,” a medic says, pressing ice against Bossuet's shoulder in Sardonic Colon's dressing room.

“Jesus Christ,” Joly says, closing his eyes. “Not indoors, fuck—Grantaire—”

But Grantaire ignores him and lights a cigarette anyway. Each deep inhale streamlines his anger, bringing it into sharper focus.

“What a fucking joke,” he says, unable to sit still. “What a fucking _joke_.”

“It's bullshit, I know,” Eponine says. “You pour your heart out on stage every night, and people think you're not authentic anymore because you wanted to be able to pay for health insurance.”

“But they're right,” Grantaire says. “We _aren't_ authentic anymore. Our new record has fucking _ballads_ on it, for fuck's sake, we're touring with _Sank Amy_.”

“Whose fault is that?” Musichetta snaps from where she's clutching Bossuet's hand. Bossuet, to his credit, appears to be putting up with it admirably, patiently letting Joly clean his shoulder. 

“What, you're going to blame me for this tour?” Grantaire says. “I didn't fucking want it in the first place—I _told_ you—our fans can't afford arenas. They're overpriced and they're full of the same kids who make fun of _our_ fans—”

“That's obviously not what I'm talking about,” Musichetta says. “If we're writing ballads, it's because _you're_ writing ballads.”

“Well, none of the rest of you seem to be interested in writing any lyrics!”

“You never even date anyone,” Bossuet says, now drying off with a towel. His voice stays remarkably friendly, which only serves to irritate Grantaire further. “How can you write _love songs_?”

Grantaire doesn't reply, only smokes so moodily and quickly that his first cigarette burns out after only a couple of minutes.

Courfeyrac comes in before Grantaire can light another, one of the arena's talent managers in tow.

“What happened?” Courfeyrac says.

“Someone threw a bottle full of piss at me and called us sell outs,” Bossuet says, having moved over to his bag to pick out a new shirt. He gives his stupid dopey smile, and Courfeyrac grins in return.

“You _are_ sell outs,” Courfeyrac says. “I mean, you're touring with the American equivalent of One Direction. Say goodbye to your indie cred.”

“At least you're self aware,” Eponine says.

“Right,” the arena lady says. “Well, we've cleared the broken glass and, uh, bodily fluids off the stage. We wanted to see what you want to do.”

“Is everything still set up?” Joly says.

“Yeah,” the arena lady says. “No damage to any of your equipment, and the dude who did it is in arena jail in case you want to press charges. What do you want to do?”

“Let's go finish our set,” Musichetta says. She looks around at the rest of them. “Right?”

“I don't want to finish our set,” Grantaire says. “I want off this fucking tour.”

“Grantaire—” Courfeyrac says.

“No, fuck off, this isn't about you,” Grantaire says. “I said this was bullshit months ago.”

“Dude, do you think that guy was right?” Courfeyrac says, looking at Grantaire in alarm.

Grantaire doesn't meet his eye.

“We're a nightclub band,” he says. It sounds stupid even to him.

“Well, we're playing arenas now,” Eponine says. “Be fucking grateful, Jesus.”

“You think that asshole was an arena asshole?” Bossuet says. “Seems like the kind of guy who's never seen a show bigger than the one at his local townie dive.”

That's the _point_ , Grantaire wants to say.

“Yeah,” Eponine says, giving Grantaire a half-smile as if trying to appease him. He rolls his eyes.

“I think we should finish our set,” Bossuet says. 

“Fine,” Grantaire says. “Let's fucking play, then, if you wanna play.”

Joly tosses an inhaler into Grantaire's hands. “Next time you probably shouldn't smoke mid-set,” Joly says, pushing past Grantaire and picking his guitar up where he dropped it outside their dressing room.

When they reach the stage, the fans cheer loud enough that Grantaire's ears actually hurt, a sharp searing pain in his eardrums.

“We're Sardonic Colon,” Musichetta shouts into the microphone, voice raw and angry. “And _fuck that guy_.”

The cheers get louder, turn into chants of their name— _CO-LON! CO-LON! CO-LON!_ —and Grantaire strums the first few notes of “Blue Moon.” Immediately people start screaming, and when Eponine raises her hands and claps, they clap with her.

Somehow, it doesn't quell the nausea in Grantaire stomach, the distaste for all of this, the wrongness of it, the feeling that he was right all along and this entire fucking tour has been a massive, massive mistake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry that this is so much later than expected! i haven't been feeling well recently, and the last thing i wanted to do was stare at gimp trying to get all the fiddly graphics right.
> 
> i hope you had fun. please leave a comment!!
> 
> (also sidenote: porn that was going to happen in this fic is now happening in a sequel-y type of thing that i have weirdly already almost finished. the graphics for this take way longer than expected.)


	3. volume three: sold out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not affiliated with Buzznet, Buzzfeed, Rolling Stone, or NPR in any way. Those tweets are fake, although the tumblr posts and instas are only partially fabricated. The tumblr blogs and author names are also fake. If you represent any of those companies and take issue with me using your name/images, please let me know and I'll take them down.

Chicago, as it turns out, is blisteringly cold in December, wind whipping between buildings and chilling all of them straight through their heavy coats to the thin t-shirts most of them wear underneath.

They're spending two nights there anyway, Cosette chattering away on the phone about how it's the birthplace of punk pop “if you don't count Jersey, I mean, and people never seem to—but Taking Back Sunday, you know?—but yeah, I think it's a great opportunity for you guys to do some extra promotion, so we booked you for two shows. First one sold out really quickly anyway.”

Grantaire plans to spend most of the second day stretched out in the hotel room he shares with Eponine, catching up on sleep in a bed that isn't attached to a moving wall. 

But a dent in his plans comes in the surprising form of Combeferre, who shows up in Grantaire's hotel room soon after the afterparty in a hoodie and joggers.

“Have you ever been to Lake Michigan?” Combeferre asks, leaning against the doorframe in a languid pose eerily reminiscent of Enjolras's go-to. He's in a threadbare Cornell sweatshirt, red lettering peeling off so that it looks more like it says _COP F L_ instead, his blue parka tucked under his arm and a scarf already twisted tightly around his neck.

“No,” Grantaire says.

“Want to?”

“Why?”

Combeferre shrugs. “I'm from here and I wanted to go for a drive. I need a break from my bandmates, but all the techs are in bed for the night.”

“Where's Eponine?”

Combeferre fiddles with the fraying sleeve of his sweatshirt. Grantaire wonders if he knows that Enjolras does that too, fidgeting and picking at things when he's thinking or when he's nervous.

“She's still at the afterparty,” Combeferre says. “With Marius and a few other people. So. Want to go?”

“She's with _Marius_?”

“I think they're patching things up.”

“What?”

“Oh, not like that.” Combeferre looks up at Grantaire, gives him a lighting fast smile that momentarily reveals brilliant teeth and genuine sweetness. He's one of the quieter ones in most of their interviews, Combeferre, prefers to sit back and let Courfeyrac and Enjolras do most of the talking, but he never turns down the opportunity to smoke a bowl with Sardonic Colon or play poker on their bus. “I think they're just—gonna be friends.”

“Okay,” Grantaire says.

“Okay?”

“Okay, I'll go.”

Combeferre smiles again, and it lasts longer this time. “Alright. Come on.”

It turns out that he's actually rented a car, and because he's a member of Sank Amy, Grantaire has to believe the showmanship here is genuine. It's an ancient pick-up truck that Combeferre says the guy at the rental car place swore was good at driving uphill.

“Who knows, though,” Combeferre says, cranking up the heat and loosening his scarf a little. “I just wanted a car that would look rustic but have good heating anyway.”

“It feels like we're about to kill a lot of fossil fuels,” Grantaire says, testing the waters.

To his surprise, Combeferre laughs.

“It'll be worth it,” he says. “Trust me.”

Combeferre forces the pickup to speed down the highway, a motion which Grantaire finds strangely freeing. 

“I hate being in a moving object so much less when it's in a car and not in a bus,” Grantaire says.

“Maybe that's just because you're in the front seat,” Combeferre says. “Secret control freak Grantaire. You sure you don't wanna be the one driving?”

“We'd both end up lost somewhere in Canada,” Grantaire says, playing with the dials as static noise pumps out of the speakers.

“Might be fun. You have your passport on you?” Combeferre asks, merging right.

“You're not actually going there, are you?”

“I wish. We have a show tomorrow, though, and both our bands would be pissed at us if we got stranded in another country.”

“What if we get stranded in the middle of Lake Michigan?”

“I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“Was that a pun?”

Combeferre gives his lightning fast smile again and takes the next exit, confident enough in his movements that it's clear he's done this before. He drives off through what Grantaire is sure is either a small town or a weirdly suburban neighborhood of Chicago, down a few side roads, the wrong way through a one way street, and then finally through a densely-thicketed wood.

“If I didn't know any better, I'd guess that you were about to kill me.”

Combeferre laughs. “I considered it. Just for the press, you know? But I think not even Enjolras would want me to go to that length.”

“You sure? Dude can't stand me, and if it spreads the message, it's worth it, right?”

“Don't be ridiculous.” Combeferre pulls up to an actual cliff overlooking the lake and gets out. He pulls two blankets out of the truck bed and produces a beautiful blown glass piece and some weed. Grantaire follows him out and then up onto the hood of the truck, taking blankets and then pizza as Combeferre passes them to him.

“You do this often?” Grantaire says. “Bring guys out here, woo them, push them off the cliff?”

Combeferre huffs out a chuckle that's mostly steamed up breath as he packs the bowl, sitting cross-legged on the hood with impeccable balance. “Like I said. It'd be good press, but not even the master utilitarian himself would go for it.”

“Why not?” Grantaire asks. “It's our responsibility as artists to save people, right? What if it comes as the cost of killing me?”

“You don't believe that,” Combeferre says, fishing a lighter out of his pocket. It has an eagle and an American flag printed across it, and Grantaire can't find it in himself to make fun of it.

“Don't believe what?”

“That it's our responsibility to save people. You believe it's our responsibility as artists to make good art.”

“Enjolras thinks it's our responsibility as artists to express some political message or whatever. To save people, he'd say.”

“I happen to disagree with him.”

“So you think our responsibility is to make good art?”

Combeferre looks up at him, pipe between his lips, lighter perfectly positioned. He does a hit before he responds, half-coughs on the exhale in an oddly endearing moment, and passes the piece to Grantaire.

“You're not even convinced you're doing that,” Combeferre says finally.

Grantaire shrugs.

“I don't think we have a responsibility as artists,” Combeferre says. “I mean, as humans, maybe there's some kind of—I don't want to say responsibility, because that implies duty and I don't think that—but let's say it anyway. I think maybe there's a human responsibility to do good? So if art is your thing, you can use it to do good?” He takes the piece when Grantaire passes it back to him, does another hit, exhales without coughing this time. “But I don't think that translates to a responsibility to save the world with your art, or to even make art that's good. Am I making sense?”

“No.”

Combeferre laughs and leans back against the windshield. 

“You think this thing has the structural integrity to support my weight?” Combeferre says, stretching his legs out in front of him. “Also, you want some pizza?”

“If I'd said no to this trip, would you have come here alone?”

“Probably,” Combeferre says. “But it would've been way less fun.”

“Is this fun? Are we having fun?”

Combeferre laughs again. “This isn't fun for you? Free weed, free pizza, and a great view?”

Grantaire looks out at the lake below them. “It is a great view. Are you sure you're not going to try to kill me?”

“Not really,” Combeferre says. “Enjolras just asked me to smother you on our way back, but I think this is actually better.” 

Grantaire snorts. “He is so easy to piss off.”

“You just get under his skin,” Combeferre says. “I think you remind him what it's like to have to convince people.”

“I thought the whole point of him was convincing people.” The pizza is cold by now, but Grantaire eats it anyway. It makes him think of his old dorm room, of hungover mornings before final exams.

“Yeah, but he's good-looking and talented. Makes it a lot easier.”

“You just let him get away with that? No challenging him?”

“I challenge him a lot,” Combeferre says. “I just happen to also agree with him a lot. You're different. He doesn't just want to argue with you. He wants to change your mind.”

“He wants to save me.”

“He's a lonely person. I don't think he knew that until you were in the picture.”

“He has seven bandmates.”

“You have four,” Combeferre says. “You're honestly telling me you've never felt lonely.”

“Maybe if I had three more bandmates I wouldn't.”

“Or maybe you'd commit actual murder.” 

“You really do sound like you're going to kill me sometime soon,” Grantaire says. “You're not gonna get me without a fight, you know.”

Combeferre laughs. “I'd like to see you try.”

They finish the bowl and Combeferre packs another one, smoking it mostly by himself while Grantaire makes way through the better part of a pack of cigarettes. 

“How do you still sing when you smoke so much?” Combeferre asks.

“I have no clue,” Grantaire says honestly. “I feel like I'm okay for now, but it'll probably make me sound like shit in a few years.”

“Like, once you hit thirty, then it's all downhill? One day you're Mariah, next you're Amy Winehouse?”

“Yeah, exactly. But that's not exactly the worst comparison, you know? I'd rather sound like Amy than—I don't know—some sad fuck who can't sing anymore.”

“Then maybe you should quit while you're ahead.”

“Maybe.”

Combeferre checks his watch and puts his piece away. “We should probably head back. You wanna drive?”

“Are you giving me that option because you're way too baked, or because you think I'm a control freak?”

“Both.”

“You know, no one's ever called me that before,” Grantaire says, accepting the keys. “But I think it's actually right.”

“Of course it's right,” Combeferre says. “ _I_ said it >”

He climbs into the passenger seat of the old pickup, and Grantaire sits down at the wheel next to him. Combeferre's right: he _does_ want to drive himself around for once, feel the power of a machine like this beneath him. Grantaire half-smiles to himself as he adjusts the rearview mirror, and Combeferre gives a huff of laughter that sounds more stoned than Grantaire expected. He takes a sip of water to calm his dry throat and, pumping up the radio, drives them home.

—

[bigger](https://i.imgur.com/Gcsvce7.jpg)

—

The nighttime drive leaves Grantaire feeling surprisingly well-rested. He managed to forget, first while he studied and lived in New York and then when they toured so constantly, that he actually likes driving. He likes the control of it, the taming of a hundred years' worth of death-defying technology. It's like being onstage without the accompanying anxiety—that grinding, churning feeling; not stage fright, exactly, more the what-if-they-hate-me panic that comes with selling stuff you make to sometimes-fickle teenagers, the fear of trusting people you don't know with your ego.

He collapses into bed when he gets home, or what amounts to home on tour, a comfortable hotel bed and hopefully-clean sheets. Eponine is already asleep, entire body tucked beneath the blankets, prescription bottle on the nightstand. Grantaire debates stealing one of her Ambien and decides against it tonight, stretching out with his writing notebook instead.

The lyrics he writes aren't good, exactly, but they're something. It's been weeks since he's written anything lyric-able, and even if the words that come out are about trees and cliffs and l'appel du vide, he thinks it'll at least be good for collaboration's sake. 

He doesn't need a song. He just needs _something_.

All of this means that when he wakes up the morning after, Grantaire feels more refreshed than he has in ages. Smoking instead of drinking has left him less hungover than he's been in weeks, and when he gets up, it's at a reasonable hour for once. He showers and gets dressed quickly, accepting a breakfast invitation from an only slightly groggy Eponine. 

“I booked studio space last night,” he says when they're at a diner near the hotel, already outfitted with truckstop-adjacent coffee.

To her credit, the spit-take she does is small.

“Why?” Eponine says. “I mean, I have a couple of beats going on Garageband, and I think Joly might have a keyboard track, but—what are we supposed to do in a studio?” 

There's another beat of silence, and then her eyes widen in realization.

“No way,” she says. “Writer's block's over?”

“I went out with Combeferre last night,” Grantaire says. “When I got back, I was just—I don't know. It's not _good_ , but I think it'd be beneficial for us to get back in the studio together. Remember why we do this in the first place.”

“You went out with Combeferre? That's … the least-expected pairing between our two bands.”

“I think Musichetta and Jehan is slightly less expected. I mean, Combeferre and I at least have a couple of things in common, right?”

“Only Enjolras and weed,” Eponine says dryly. “You should hear how he talks about him.”

“I did. Gushes, yeah. Almost makes me jealous.”

“Me too,” Eponine says, and then does her delicate “oh fuck” cough.

“So I was right,” Grantaire says triumphantly. “Something _is_ going on there.”

“I don't know. It's hard, 'cause of tour … we've decided not to talk about it until afterward.”

“And yet you hang out literally all the time.”

“I mean, not talking about having sex doesn't mean we can't have sex.”

“So you're having sex.”

“I didn't say that. I just said we weren't talking about it.”

“Tricky,” Grantaire says. “Not cute, though.”

Eponine sticks out her tongue at him. “You're one to talk. Enjolras talks about you _constantly_. It's 'Grantaire is such a dick' this and 'Grantaire is so lovely' that. It's insufferable. Why do you think Combeferre is trying to get away?”

Grantaire half-laughs, but the thought of this distracts him so thoroughly that he's pretty much useless for the rest of their meal.

—

—

Sank Amy are an artist's band, Grantaire thinks, leaning against the arena's VIP bar with a beer bottle in hand. He was skeptical at first, but in this, at least, they've won him over. Their ridiculous circus costumes in that fake congressional chamber, Courfeyrac bumping his hips against Jehan's and singing backing vocals into Jehan's neck, Enjolras shouting Marx quotes between songs—it works for him, Grantaire thinks.

“We've got more new music for you,” Courfeyrac tells the audience, which roars in unanimous approval. His on-stage persona is a lot like his real life persona, except that his voice is a lot louder and a little more hoarse. The rest of their band isn't like that. Enjolras is more severe, Jehan almost silent. “Who wants to hear it?”

Grantaire wonders when the fuck these people have time to write and record new music when they spend so much time harassing Sardonic Colon. He supposes there are some times when they're all on their bus together when they're on the road, and then times when they're all parked behind some big arena in some metropolitan area or other and they could've gone to a studio, but he's never noticed it.

“It's called 'Secondhand Smoke,'” Enjolras says, so close to the mic that Grantaire swears his lips must brush it. “It's a little different from our other stuff.”

“It's dedicated to a special someone,” Courfeyrac half-coos, and Enjolras shoots him a dirty look. It's cute, Grantaire supposes, that Enjolras has finally let Jehan write a proper love song. “Luckily for us, he's here tonight.”

“I really hope you like it,” Enjolras says, giving one of those earnest half-smiles to the crowd, doing that thing where he fakes eye contact with everyone. Grantaire can almost swear Enjolras is looking at him, but that's his talent, making everyone think he cares about them individually. 

It turns out the song is pretty good, a heavy bass line thrumming through the arena's floors, sinking straight through Grantaire's bones. The rhythm feels in sync with his heartbeat, and there is nothing, Grantaire thinks, closing his eyes, quite like live music—the bass, the vibrations, feeling all of it so that it's a physical and not merely sonic experience—you can't get that from a FLAC file. You can't even get it from a record.

The crowd goes wild at every line, learns the chorus by its second repetition, sings about being brand new and secondhand at the same time. It's almost a sweet song, Grantaire thinks, and then he realizes that this is brilliant, that it's exactly what Enjolras needed to win them over completely: a proper love song combined with his charisma means that these people will cross the desert with him or for him, no questions asked. And maybe even have a drink with him afterward.

—

—

They bicker the first time they're in the studio together again, Bossuet and Musichetta arguing over a chord progression, Joly snorting crushed Adderall and saying none of the lyrics make sense while Grantaire shouts that it's fucking _music_ , haven't you ever listened to the _Beatles_ , are you gonna tell me what Lucy in the fucking yellow submarine with diamonds is supposed to mean, Eponine telling all of them to shut the fuck up and get it together.

In the end, they have nothing. Joly's ears are bright red in agitation, and Musichetta's arms are crossed, and Eponine is out of breath, and Bossuet isn't meeting any of their eyes and has managed to slice up his arm on a guitar string, and Grantaire wonders if this is actually going to work. They came back from it once before, after the tour with the metalheads, but it feels so much worse this time. There's so much more at stake, and consequently it feels so much easier to destroy everything. 

When he gets back on the bus, Grantaire thinks of lyrics despite himself, doodles music notes in the corner that turn into an actual bar or two of music. He rarely writes music himself—Joly and Musichetta have classical training, Eponine's been playing various percussion instruments since pre-school, and Bossuet can sight-read as well as any orchestra conductor because he's _been_ an orchestra conductor—but he gets an idea stuck in his head and scribbles it down and calls the studio in the next city and books space.

And the next time they're in the studio together, it's quieter. They break up their tasks, come up with a few melodies and beats, put them to words. Eponine produces a pipe that looks suspiciously similar to Combeferre's, and they pack and repack it periodically. Joly restructures a few of Grantaire's songs, and then Grantaire restructures that, and at the end, they have some words that resemble something that could eventually be worth something real.

The third time they're in the studio together, it's more of the same. The fourth and fifth times, too.

But then the sixth time, the five of them exhausted from waking up before afternoon every day to go to the studio, extra press because of their upcoming album release, barely any sleep, lines of coke off Musichetta's keyboard—the sixth time, they have a song.

—

—

Recording with Sardonic Colon again, even if it's just demos and early 2000s emo covers, is electrifying. It shoots new energy into their shows, and Grantaire finds himself giddy even when he runs out of coke, kissing Musichetta's cheek, spinning and dancing and hopping down into the crowd whenever he can. It means they've put a temporary lid on album-related bickering, but the album comes out in a week, and they are all a mess.

Offstage, Grantaire is a ball of nerves, flitting around, annoying everyone. Joly is no better, though, and he's so stoned all the time that Grantaire's surprised he finds the energy to pick up his instrument each night at shows. Grantaire suspects they owe Joly's survival at least partially to the endless nagging of Bossuet and motivating of Musichetta. Eponine, meanwhile, seems to be taking it all in stride, coolly going through all the usual motions, not dispelling a drop more of sweat than usual—but Grantaire doesn't fail to notice her more frequent use of Ambien, how groggy she is in the mornings.

That means they're primed for it, completely ready, desperate to break free, when the record company throws a party to celebrate their third straight month of touring, somewhere flat in middle America. The only nightclub in town closes at one, rather hilariously, and they all move to a hotel room that has a fully stocked wet-bar and plenty of flat surfaces off which to do drugs. 

“This is ideal,” Joly says, though both he and Grantaire have sworn off the uppers for the time being, jittery as they are without any help. “I _deal_.”

Enjolras, whose frequent appearances at parties hasn't ceased to surprise his bandmates, shoves his hands deeper in his pockets and follows them to the bar. 

“Pour me a drink, Grantaire,” he says.

They've barely spoken since the catastrophic fake date with Jehan and Courfeyrac and Cosette's forced interview with AP afterward, but here Enjolras is, leaning in all his faux insouciance against the wall so that shadow falls over his face just-so, casting his cheekbones into even sharper relief.

“Thought you didn't indulge,” Grantaire says, raising an eyebrow.

“Could be worse,” Enjolras says. “Could be—I don't know—a drug whose use supports the destruction of nearly an entire continent.”

“But is drinking going to save the world?” Grantaire says. “I mean, maybe it won't destroy it, but is it going to _save_ it?”

Enjolras stares at Grantaire for a long moment. “I've decided that not all actions have to be strictly utilitarian,” he says. “Indulgences aren't just indulgent. They actually help keep us sane.”

“Is that why you've started showing up to parties?” Grantaire says.

“How do you know I haven't always been a party animal?”

“Because no one who parties a lot uses the phrase 'party animal,' you giant nerd.”

Enjolras actually smiles at this. “Pour me a drink,” he says again.

Grantaire makes them drinks with the spherical ice cubes at the wet-bar, a single for Enjolras and a double for himself.

“Not fair,” Enjolras says. “Drink for drink, come on.”

“There's no way you can keep up with me,” Grantaire says. 

Enjolras's eyes glint at this challenge, and Grantaire realizes two things at once: first, that Enjolras is deeply, terribly competitive; and second, that he's an idiot for not figuring this out before.

Grantaire grins.

“Okay, then,” Grantaire says. “If you really wanna try …”

He pours Enjolras a double of his own, and Enjolras raises an eyebrow at it.

“Cheers,” he says, knocking his glass against Grantaire's.

They drink them in sync. Grantaire watches the rise and fall of Enjolras's Adam's apple, relishes the burn of the liquor flowing down his throat. When he looks up, he sees that Enjolras has been staring at him, the smallest smile gracing his alcohol-moistened lips.

“Another?” Grantaire says.

Enjolras's smile widens.

Nearly an hour and a few more drinks later, Enjolras is loudly opinionating, swinging his glass around, sloshing his drink everywhere.

“I don't think what you do is worthless,” Enjolras says. Some of his whiskey lands on the front of Grantaire's shirt, and Enjolras reaches forward with a napkin to dab it off. “I don't. I just—it's hard for me sometimes. To remember that not everyone is like me.”

“I thought the whole point of Sank Amy was diversity for diversity's sake.”

“It was.” Enjolras takes another sip of the whiskey Grantaire poured him. “Sometimes I forget that diversity exists when you can't see it, too.”

Grantaire isn't sure what that means, but Enjolras hasn't broken eye contact in so long that he thinks it might just be because he's half-dazzled by his gaze, dizzy from alcohol and sound and light and the sheer godliness of the man standing before him, gleaming in inhuman glory.

“Drink for drink?” Grantaire says, raising his glass. “Cheers.”

He throws the whole thing back at once. Enjolras looks at him for a moment, calculating, and then he chugs too, wavers a little, holds his glass out for a refill.

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

Grantaire refills Enjolras's drink. Straight vodka this time, for the burn. Enjolras smiles, and Grantaire thinks that he's officially fucked. For all his self-restraint, he's pretty sure that he won't be able to avoid hitting on Enjolras tonight, not when he's looking at him like that, those eyes, the jaw that launched a thousand ships, lips that could spark a revolution—

“Stop staring at me,” Enjolras says. “I know this is weird, but I do _sometimes_ have fun.”

“You don't need to drink to have fun,” Grantaire says.

“I'll be the judge of that,” Enjolras says. Smile going all crooked. Left eyebrow pushing up. 

Grantaire coughs, not indelicately. He's almost positive that this is some weird form of flirting for Enjolras, whom Grantaire has never seen do anything of the sort. But Enjolras is standing very close to him, not breaking eye contact, pledging to follow him drink for drink—it feels, Grantaire thinks, rather like a challenge.

We ll, Grantaire fucks heavy with challenges. He raises his glass—a final toast to Enjolras's liver—and it's all downhill from there. They get through half the bottle just the two of them, and though Grantaire's vision is swimming a little, Enjolras is really close to being incapacitated, so drunk his laugh turns into a bubbly giggle that is entirely uncharacteristic.

“But then,” he keeps saying, “but then _Combeferre_ found _Prouvaire_ , like, basically in a _hole_ cause he was a weird art kid—” and then he bursts into laughter, unable to finish the story.

Drunk Enjolras is also surprisingly affectionate, leaning against Grantaire, head on Grantaire's shoulder or arm looped around his waist. Fingers stuck in Grantaire's belt loops, or reaching into Grantaire's pocket to pull out his cigarettes. What's that line? The only things that pierce the human heart are beauty and affection? Drunk Enjolras has both, and Grantaire can feel the way it burrows into him, this new information. 

“I wrote a song about you,” Enjolras says, sticking a cigarette into Grantaire's mouth and lighting it with a hand that's just coordinated enough to not burn itself. 

Grantaire can't help but smile at that, which makes Enjolras laugh in delight, which makes _him_ laugh too, breathy and gasping, great puffs of smoke that drift in front of them and then dissipate.

“Wanna dance?” Enjolras asks, but then half-trips over his own feet, looking fairly green.

“I actually think it's maybe time for you to go to bed,” Grantaire says, looking up to find someone who can take on this task.

But the Sank Amy guys are all otherwise occupied, Bahorel so high he hasn't stopped laughing in what seems like an hour, great booming sounds coming from his corner. Combeferre is drunk, too, sharing a bottle of whiskey with Eponine, Jehan, and Courfeyrac, all of whom look thoroughly trashed. Feuilly is trying to argue with Bahorel and then himself starting to laugh like it's uncontrollable, like they planned it, some universal Sank Amy determination to have a Good Time tonight. Even Marius looks completely wasted, he and Cosette engaging in heavy PDA that Grantaire doesn't want to distract them from.

So that means it's up to him to get Enjolras to his room and put him in bed and make sure he doesn't choke on his own vomit. Great. 

“Maybe it's time for you to take me to bed,” Enjolras is saying.

“The last time we so much as winked at each other, you cut off all contact,” Grantaire reminds him, bodily pulling Enjolras toward him so they can start upstairs to Enjolras's room. Combeferre catches Grantaire's eye from across the room, raises an eyebrow. Grantaire shoots him a thumbs up and then cringes at himself, but Combeferre nods like he understands. Definitely thoroughly trashed.

“Cause you're so,” Enjolras says, and then frowns as Grantaire half-drags him out of the room. “Where are we going?”

“I'm going to take you to your room, tuck you in, give you a glass of water, and then leave. Sound good?”

“I'm in room 204D,” Enjolras says helpfully.

“Great.”

They get on the elevator, Grantaire praying that if Enjolras is going to puke, he's at least going to do it into a toilet or a trash can. Enjolras holds out until they got onto the twentieth floor, humming a Sank Amy song to himself in a manner that Grantaire tries not to find adorable. He hauls Enjolras down the hallway, and Enjolras's fingers brush against Grantaire's collar, alcohol-hot, distracting him from the task at hand and sending little rivulets of guilt down his spine. He fishes the room key out of Enjolras's—jacket, thankfully—pocket and opens the door to 204D. 

As it turns out, Sank Amy's hotel rooms are much nicer than Sardonic Colon's, if only because they're singles instead of doubles. Or maybe Enjolras is just the odd one out and gets his own room. Grantaire can't imagine living with him would be any fun, even just for one night.

It's easy enough to help Enjolras stagger into the bathroom—“I wanna brush my teeth,” he says, indignant and surprisingly half-lucid—and only a little weird that Grantaire has to hold his hair back while he pukes and then unbutton his pants for him so he can pee. Grantaire tells himself it's better than getting a stern scolding from Cosette the next morning if Enjolras wets the bed or something, but Grantaire's not even sure if adults are capable of doing that. It's not like Enjolras has alcohol poisoning. 

In fact, other than the complete lack of coordination and slightly slurred speech, Enjolras seems almost normal. He's still babbling revolutionary nonsense into Grantaire's ear—“And Emerson, fuck Emerson, really fuck him, but he thought the power of the individual was the most important thing, that's why democracy is the only valid form of government, because it's the only one that gives the people real power over the government, do you get it, that's why even if the smartest nicest person in the world wanted to be dictator they couldn't be, but I guess the smartest nicest person in the world wouldn't want to be dictator, or maybe it's like in that movie Watchmen where it's almost a benevolent bad guy situation—” “You've seen Watchmen?” Grantaire asks, amused—and he manages to get toothpaste onto his brush with very little assistance.

“It feels like my teeth are covered in slime,” Enjolras says, brush hanging from his mouth.

“Alright, Apollo, get it together. I'm not gonna brush your teeth for you.”

“Don't Apollo me,” Enjolras says, pouting. The brush falls onto the sink with a clatter. Enjolras stares at it, looks back up at Grantaire, picks it up, runs water over it, whirls around alarmingly quickly, sways, and nearly falls against the bathroom wall.

“You are seriously going to concuss yourself,” Grantaire says. “Can you please just let me take you to bed.”

“Take me to _bed_ ,” Enjolras says, grinning. His dazzle is only a little dented by the drunken droop of his eyelids. “I knew it.”

“Very funny,” Grantaire says, wrapping his arm around Enjolras's waist again to drag him into the bedroom. “Do you think you're going to throw up again?”

Enjolras considers it. “No. I feel much better.”

“Are you dizzy? Water in your mouth?”

“No, just tired,” Enjolras says, relaxing a little in Grantaire's grip.

“That's good,” Grantaire says, making a mental note to put a lined trashcan near Enjolras's head anyway.

“This is very nice of you, you know,” Enjolras says. “I'm not a belligerent drunk, am I? Combeferre says I am sometimes but he always deals with it because he's so sweet. You're sweet too, right?”

“No one's called me sweet since I was in a children's choir in elementary school.”

“They're missing out. You. Are. _Sweet_.”

“It's so weird to me when you use words in a non-pragmatic way. Like, from you, I can only imagine the word 'sweet' referring to coffee with too much Equal in it.”

Grantaire sets Enjolras down on the bed and goes to fill a glass with water.

“Fuck Equal,” Enjolras calls. “I use Splenda. Is that ironic?”

“Are you making jokes about yourself now?”

“Thank you,” Enjolras says, accepting the glass and proceeding to spill most of it on himself. “I'm gonna go to sleep now, okay?”

“You do that,” Grantaire says, taking the now-empty glass to refill. 

When he returns, Enjolras is slumped over on his bed, snoring softly. The sight of him this vulnerable would almost be endearing if he weren't so trashed he's actually drooling. Maybe it's endearing anyway. Grantaire considers taking a photo and decides he's a good enough person not to even if he's not a good enough person to not get Enjolras thoroughly fucked up. But then, he thinks, Enjolras did sort of bring it on himself.

He goes about the motions people have done a thousand times for him: pull Enjolras's shoes off, but leave his socks on; tug his already-unbuttoned jeans off leg by leg (a task that proves astoundingly difficult because Enjolras—of course—wears jeans tight so tight it's a little alarming); look pointedly away from the crotch area; pull Enjolras's jacket off and hang it over the back of a chair; cover Enjolras in a blanket; set a trash can by his bed; turn him so he's on his side.

“Thanks, R,” Enjolras mumbles, sleepy, as Grantaire tucks him in. “Love you.”

“Good night, Enjolras,” Grantaire says, forcing himself to ignore the bile that rises in his throat at that.

He stays put in the hotel room armchair for a while, flicking through Instagram and then Twitter and then watching Netflix with one earbud in until Enjolras's breathing turns regular. Then he tucks himself into his own bed several floors down and, with the aid of half a pilfered Ambien, falls asleep.

—

—

At most shows, a local DJ plays before Sardonic Colon, half to warm up the crowd and half to kill time until the floor fills up and people get into their seats.

After their pre-show, Grantaire and Eponine go to grab a drink in the VIP section with some of the Sank Amy guys. Tonight's DJ is particularly good at hyping up the trickle of fans crowding into the floor early. He shouts about music and anarchy and revolution, and Enjolras is clearly having a great time, beaming, sipping at a seltzer. Combeferre, who always watches the DJ's set because it helps him with his anxiety, passes Eponine a beer. 

“Two more months of this,” Combeferre says. “Then we can go home. See our families. Relax. Record.”

It's a nice prospect, Grantaire thinks, even if it is far off: they've nearly hit the west coast, but after that they need to double back around, southwest and then the border, a couple of shows in Mexico, nearly a week in Texas alone.

“You just saw your family,” Enjolras says. “Besides, I still think we should think about extending the tour to South America.” He has the bored tone of one rehashing a tired argument, as if trying to annoy his opponent into giving up. “I know we need to rest, I get that, but it's a place that needs mobilization and that Stars would actually pay for us to go to. They won't go for Egypt, you know?”

“We could try Egypt,” Grantaire says. He's not a part of this fight, not really, but the idea isn't as bad as Combeferre keeps making it out to be. “My cousin DJs there. He has club connections in most of North Africa I think.”

“Cosette wants us to wait for more stability before we go there,” Feuilly says. “I wanted to go back to Palestine, but she says it'll alienate Jewish fans. Never mind that _I'm_ Jewish …”

“PR is part of her job,” Combeferre says patiently. “Who knows if we'd be safe anyway, you know? The last thing we want is Sank Amy fans getting hurt by Daesh or something.”

“They don't attack Palestine or Israel,” Feuilly says. 

“We can't just tour Palestine, though,” Enjolras says. He already has his show makeup on, a starburst over one eye and lips painted violet. They're all going with a purple theme tonight, Feuilly's dark eyes highlighted with plum liner, Combeferre with indigo makeup in the hollows of his cheeks to mimic shadows. “If we're making the trip, I think we should hit up the whole Levant.”

“And the Gulf. North Africa. Maybe the whole Mediterranean.” 

“Cosette thinks it's a bad idea,” Eponine says. “But we could do South America.” She looks over at Grantaire. “What do you think?”

“I love pisco,” Grantaire says. “I could stock up.”

Enjolras looks at him in faint surprise. “So you'd be down?”

“Yeah,” Grantaire decides. “I mean, if the triplets are in.”

“The triplets,” Feuilly echoes faintly. “Gross.”

“You're not the one living with them,” Eponine says, finishing her beer. “We should probably get going.” 

She squeezes Combeferre's hand in goodbye, which elicits a surprising smile from Enjolras that leaves Grantaire oddly aflutter as he follows Eponine backstage.

—

[bigger](https://i.imgur.com/wXaZWdM.jpg)

—

“I think there's something I have to tell you,” says Enjolras, who has recently returned to his frequent pop ups in Grantaire's personal space, except that this time Sardonic Colon's techs are packing their shit into a minivan to drive to the airport to fly to New York for their album release party, a prospect which has Grantaire desperately popping Xanax in an attempt to calm the fuck down.

“What's up,” Grantaire says, making sure he has the proper winter-wear for New York in his bag. He feels like every drop of blood running through his veins is on its own individual brand of stimulant. He's shaky and out of sync with himself and despite the sheer amount of movement he's indulging in, he can't seem to get warm. The tremors in his hands make even the simple task of packing feel apocalyptic, like he's choosing sweaters for an upcoming ice age instead of an evening in New York City.

“I haven't been completely honest with you.”

Scarf—check.

“I just—I know we don't get along super well or whatever.”

Hat—check.

“I think you should know.”

Gloves—check.

Leather jacket—check.

Uniqlo thermal—check.

“Wasn't there something you wanted to tell me?” Grantaire says, looking up.

Enjolras is worrying at his lower lip with that odd stricken look he gets sometimes, like he's been slapped in the face. He's leaning against the entryway in his trademark mix between casual and posed, and his arms are carefully crossed. Grantaire refuses to ruminate on that, on how Enjolras's movements always seem at once studied and relaxed, like he was forced through etiquette classes and then deliberately forgot everything he learned. But there's that Upper East Side grace to him anyway, that haughtiness, accidental-on-purpose superiority. 

“I feel like you breathe the life back into me,” Enjolras says, and the world stops turning.

A moment or an hour later, Enjolras blinks at Grantaire, several feet closer than he was before: “Grantaire?” he says. “Are you okay?”

“What does that mean?” Grantaire says. Wasted adrenaline. Fingers refusing to stay still.

“It means—I've been annoying everyone. I need you around—you—it's not like being with anyone else. I. You get under my skin.” Enjolras looks down at him helplessly, his eyes impossibly blue. “I know that's stupid, and it's not, like, the basis for a relationship or whatever—”

Grantaire steps away. “It's not the basis for _anything_. I breathe the life back into you? What are you? A fucking vampire?”

“I think it's mutual,” Enjolras says. “You can't say you don't feel it too. You can't.” He pauses. “You feel it, too, right?”

That's what does it, what tears Grantaire apart, that doubt. This is _Enjolras_ , internationally-beloved superstar, Tiger Beat is plastered with his face, his most bland tweets get thousands of retweets and likes and replies begging him to come to Brazil. 

“What could you possibly want with _me_?”

“I think you're incredible,” Enjolras says, like he's surprised Grantaire even has to ask. “I—I don't know what to say.”

“Did you think you'd come over here with your creepy vampire rhetoric and your stupid—fucking blond hair,” Grantaire says, running a hand through his hair. “I really don't have time for this right now.”

“Grantaire,” Enjolras says. 

“You think what I do and the music that I make are worthless,” Grantaire says.

And that's it, isn't it, because if you are what you make and what you make isn't worth anything, then how can you be? His art is the best of him, Grantaire has always maintained, and if it's the responsibility of artists to make important work and if important work is work that changes the world, then his work isn't important which means that _he_ isn't important—which means that he, like the world itself, is another of Enjolras's projects, an attempt to salvage the unsalvageable, important work by virtue of being solvable and revolutionizable and not much else. 

“I didn't say that.”

“You might as well have.” Grantaire closes his bag.

“Grantaire, I wrote a song about you.”

Grantaire doesn't look at him. “I have a flight to catch.”

“Grantaire.” 

Grantaire swings his bag over his shoulder and grabs his headphones.

“Grantaire.”

“What?”

Enjolras stares back at him, still stricken, and Grantaire can't decide if he wants to punch or kiss that look off his face.

“I just—” Enjolras says, and then sighs. “Good luck tonight.”

Grantaire doesn't respond, and Enjolras, who always takes no for an answer when it comes from Grantaire, leaves.

—

  
  


—

They fly into a snow flurry, and when they land, it's into a brisk and bitter New York cold. Grantaire could wax poetic about this city for hours, will probably write an album just called “bk” some day, and it thrills and delights him to be back. If he listens to “Secondhand Smoke” on the flight, book forgotten in his lap, fingers digging into palms, he doesn't mention it to anyone, even when Eponine gives him a significant look when she sees the screen on his phone.

They sell out Madison Square Garden and a midnight secret show at Terminal 5. Madison Square Garden. By themselves. 

“Hope we don't get a headache after,” Joly says when they're standing there, staring at the slowly filling-up arena. “You know. From MSG intolerance.”

“Hilarious,” Musichetta says faintly. 

They've sold out MSG before. Sort of. Well, they sold it out when they were here with Sank Amy, a show so lightning fast that Grantaire only remembers driving in to Manhattan via Queens and how he shook staring out the window at the Queensboro Bridge. 

Now they've done it, just the five of them and a random DJ. They've sold out the most famous music venue in the world. It's an arena, and they're not an arena band, but they've _sold it out_.

“I told you,” Bossuet says, grinning as more people start to crowd in. “I fucking told you.”

“It's about the amount of people who get to see us,” Musichetta says. “Five or six times as many as would've if we'd only played Terminal 5.” She looks at Grantaire hopefully, as if for confirmation, but all the air went out of his body the second he saw their faces on a poster by the entrance with a big black “SOLD OUT” sticker slapped across it.

“This is insane,” Eponine says. It's good to see that she's shaken, too. “This is fucking insane.”

And then Grantaire can't help it. He laughs, dizzy, intoxicated off Xanax and adrenaline and the _people_ , fans, _kids_. Monetary indication of worth is bullshit, he knows that, and yet—here it is. The numerical manifestation of how much people like Sardonic Colon. 

“You were right,” he tells Bossuet, stunned. “It was never about Sank Amy. At least, not completely.”

“It was about us,” Musichetta says, and even though it feels cheesy, they group hug, warmth and camaraderie, and get on with their preshow.

Playing two shows in a row is exhausting and exhilarating, and somehow the fans all know the words already. Cosette mentioned something about a leak, but it couldn't have been this big—“NPR first listen!” Bossuet shouts over applause when Grantaire glances over at him questioningly after they play one of the tracks no one's supposed to have heard yet and the audience knows every lyric already. 

Full of energy, Grantaire leaps into the air and spins, landing among fans who lift him up. He can't believe he's been so anxious about this, because the fans all seem delighted to have heard the album, sing along to every song, scream his name before he comes out like it's a prayer—Gran- _taire_! Gran- _taire_! Gran- _taire_!—and their hands surround him in a rush of sensation that leaves him laughing into his microphone instead of singing, a squeeze here, a shout into his ear there, a fan kisses him sloppily on the cheek and he seizes her, hugs her back, sings a line just to her, and makes his way back up onto the stage. He's never going to get over it, the energy, people singing words he wrote back at him like they feel them as strongly as he does. It's a promise of a thousand things, love from strangers, a vow that he'll never be alone, the knowledge that feelings are universal even if people aren't the same everywhere. He loves New York, he lives and breathes New York, and this—MSG, kids from the tristate area, college and high school, some pierced and others so average looking he knows they'd get punched in the face at a typical punk show and is for once proud that they're not a typical band—this is New York, but it's more than that. It's Sardonic Colon. It's music. It's human. It's _them_.

He lives for this. He lives and breathes it. Enjolras is wrong, Grantaire thinks, and he has to tell him, feels desperate to do it. Enjolras is _wrong_. It's not about the message. It's about the music. It's about the fans.

—

[bigger](https://i.imgur.com/3iPNkke.jpg)

—

Two flights and three shows in two days means that when they're sitting on the bus outside of Sank Amy's hotel just outside of Seattle, Grantaire is so tired he can barely keep his eyes open.

But he spends the whole flight back dreaming about Enjolras's eyelashes, and that means that when they get to their bus's parking lot, Grantaire immediately texts him. He needs to resolve this—this _mess_. They're touring together for another two months, and then they might all end up in South America, and if Enjolras is giving him the cold shoulder or being awkward or even just acting completely normal, Grantaire isn't going to be able to handle it.

So Enjolras meets Grantaire at the Dunkin Donuts behind the hotel, bag swung over his shoulder and sunglasses barely disguising his face. 

They sit near the windows, shitty coffee in tow, and Enjolras stares at Grantaire.

“So,” Enjolras says. “What's up?”

“I wanted to talk to you,” Grantaire says, angling himself so that he can see out the window and wrapping both hands around his coffee cup. “I'm sorry I was a dick the other night. I was stressed out and anxious because of the show, and I know that's not an excuse, but I'm sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” Enjolras says. His face is oddly distorted by the massive sunglasses, and Grantaire wants to reach over and pull them off. As if sensing this, Enjolras takes them off himself, tucks them into his collar. “You know, I think that's the first time I've ever heard you apologize. For anything.”

Grantaire raises an eyebrow.

“Okay, fine,” Enjolras says. “I'm sorry for springing a giant emotional revelation on you right before a nerve-racking show when I knew you were already anxious.”

“Apology accepted,” Grantaire says. “See? Growth.”

Enjolras laughs. “Growth indeed,” he says. “For what it's worth, the giant emotional revelation was honest. I'd just come to it myself, and I wanted to tell you about it immediately—it was like I couldn't keep it in. I mean, we—we didn't exist in each other's lives until a few months ago and I feel like everything is different now. I just thought you reciprocated, and I wanted to talk to someone about it, except the person I wanted to talk to about it was you, and—I don't know.” He sighs. “Anyway, I was wrong, and our buses are going to leave soon.”

“Come on my bus,” Grantaire says.

“What?”

“You weren't wrong. Come on my bus.”

Enjolras stares at him, and then breaks out in a wide smile. Eyes crinkling at the corner. Taking the sunglasses off, Grantaire thinks was worth it. “Okay.”

Back on the bus, Sardonic Colon are—blessedly—still sleeping. For once, Grantaire is endlessly grateful to be incapable of napping. They settle themselves in the lounge and draw the curtains, and it gives some semblance of privacy even though Grantaire can hear Joly snoring on the other side.

“What happens now?” Enjolras asks.

“Now,” Grantaire says, facing Enjolras on the couch. “Now we talk.”

“About what?” Enjolras says, eyes wide. Legs crossed, feet tucked carefully beneath him. Knees millimeters away from Grantaire's. Grantaire feels irritatingly aware that if he were to lean forward only a little the distance between them would be negligible at best.

There are a thousand things they need to talk about. Enjolras's respect for music, or lack thereof, specifically Grantaire's music. Grantaire's disbelief in Enjolras's message, his all-encompassing cynicism, his knowledge that this can never work. How they don't get along. Disdain in general. Enjolras's atrocious fucking timing. Grantaire's aversion to dating. Enjolras wanting to do a collaboration. “Secondhand Smoke,” if that's the song Enjolras really wrote about him, and the terrible lyrics Grantaire keeps writing about being in love with a marble Adonis that even Bossuet can't bring himself to humor. What they're going to do. Whether they'll tell anyone, and if so, who they'll tell. What the record will say. 

But Grantaire doesn't want to talk about any of them right now. “About how the hell this is supposed to work,” he says instead. 

“I don't know,” Enjolras says desperately. “I've never done this before. I just—I didn't know I cared about love or relationships or any of it until I met you. It's not vampiric. It's educational. It's enlightening. It's—it's vital. You're vital. You're not worthless, I don't think you're worthless. Please listen to me.”

“But we don't agree on anything. We can barely stand each other.”

“I love talking to you.”

“Do you?” Grantaire says. “Because you told Eponine you didn't want me to talk to you anymore.”

Enjolras shakes his head. Blond curls, unkempt, grown out too long, brush against his cheekbones. “I thought I could ignore this, but I can't.”

“Sounds like what every 20-something says when they go to the doctor.”

“Listen to me,” Enjolras says. Without makeup, his lashes are nearly white. It makes his eyes look vast. They almost overpower his face. “We argue, but we—or at least, I—always learn. And I like it. No one challenges me for the sake of the challenge, not like you do. It's interesting. It's engaging. It's—kind of hot, actually.” Enjolras looks down for a moment, but then his gaze is back on Grantaire's, wide, blue, almost hypnotizing in its earnestness. “I never feel unsatisfied after our conversations.” He blushes a little, but doesn't break eye contact. “Well, not intellectually anyway. You always give them your all.”

“How would you know?”

“I guess I don't,” Enjolras admits. “But I'm not _horrible_ at reading people, least of all you. You claim to be apathetic, but you're actually passionate about a lot of stuff, not to mention _com_ passionate. You care so deeply about things, about art and music and proving me wrong, that it's hard to feel like anyone can get in edgewise, and then suddenly you've made friends with my whole band and I'm left wondering how I missed you.”

Enjolras falls silent, gaze dropping again. His eyes close briefly, and then he turns his hands palm-up on his knees and looks back up.

“You didn't miss me,” Grantaire says.

“I was hoping you'd say that.”

“Did you rehearse this whole thing?” Grantaire asks, laughing a little. His thumb, Enjolras's jaw, a brief moment of contact. He delights in the thrill he gets, suddenly allowed to do this. 

“You know I don't do anything by halves,” Enjolras says, voice dropping to something approaching a whisper.

“You just inflated my ego for about fifteen minutes,” Grantaire says. “That was definitely not halves.”

Enjolras smiles, and Grantaire presses a finger against his lower lip. Enjolras's mouth opens automatically, hot and wet and ready, and Grantaire stares at him wide-eyed before thinking _fuck it_ and plunging his thumb into Enjolras's waiting mouth. 

“We are so fucked,” Grantaire says softly, and kisses him.

—

—

Their last show of the year is in Portland, which is a rainy cold mess of a city that none of them want to be in for New Year's Eve, not when San Francisco is up next.

The crowd reflects this, damp and unresponsive to the admittedly not-great DJ, slow to start singing and dancing to Sardonic Colon's set. 

They start with “I'm Back (from the Dead)” like they have all tour, and though most people sing along, they don't really start going until Eponine's drumming becomes almost violent as they reach the peak of “Miami Baby.” After that, the crowd is insane, jumping up and down, screaming even though most of them must've bought tickets for Sank Amy and not Sardonic Colon.

After they finish with what Grantaire would call an absolutely rousing rendition of “Let's Save the Scene (Emo Anthem)” and start clearing up their gear, the crowd screams in what seems surprisingly like fury, a long shriek that gradually starts to sound like “one more song.” 

Grantaire looks around at Eponine, who is dismantling her kit with one of their techs and shrugs at him. 

“We can do 'Magritte,'” Musichetta says. “Enjolras knows Brendon's part.”

“When the hell did that happen?”

“It was supposed to be a surprise,” she says, unapologetic. “You want to do it?”

“Is he ready?”

“I'll check,” she says, darting backstage. 

She comes back a couple of minutes later, Enjolras in tow. Immediately, the screams start up again.

“Cleared it with an arena rep,” she says. “We're good.”

Enjolras gives Grantaire a half-smile. They haven't announced anything about their … the thing between them, whatever it is, but everyone seems to know anyway, and the chants from the audience only get louder: _EN-CORE! EN-CORE! EN-CORE!_

“Can you fucking believe this?” Joly shouts, happily, and Grantaire, feeling like if he leapt right now he'd fly, starts to sing.

—

_I know_  
_we can’t build anything just by sitting_  
_in the dark together, but I am so fond of you_  
_it sounds like something a person would lie about._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poem is "Not Yr Cornfield" by Anna Meister. That line Grantaire drunkenly thinks of, “the only things that pierce the human heart”—well, it's actually something Simone Weil said, and the two things are actually beauty and affliction. Grantaire's poor drunk flustered mind mis-remembers it. Or re-members it. Dismembers, maybe. Musichetta's insta caption is Shakespeare. Grantaire's insta caption is from Hugo's text.
> 
> Anyway, thank you for reading along! I want you all to know this is something like the first act, NOT a complete story. You can sort of tell—there are a lot of feelings unexplored & resentments unresolved between Grantaire and Enjolras. I'm working hard on part two, which will explore their relationship while on tour … and then while apart. It'll probably all be delivered in one 20k long piece sometime in the next few weeks, so if you want to be alerted when it goes up, you should subscribe to the Homesick at Bandcamp (Wish You Were Here) series. Expect much less multimedia but potentially text message conversations, instas, and snaps. Also slight possibility that I might finally cave and pick faceclaims, which I don't know how to do, so please help me.
> 
> Even if you too are lost in the way of picking faceclaims, please please please leave a comment! Let me know what you'd want to read in a sequel! And did you like this fic! And also did you hate it! And why if possible! And tell me also how your day is going and what your new years resolution is! And happy new year to all of you! May your 2016s be a thousand times better than your 2015s!


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